314 13th Ave NE
Minneapolis, MN, USA

Turning a cellar into a basement

I was about 12 years old when my dad, Pete/Eli Dickerson, decided to improve the property he had purchased a couple of years earlier. The house had an old cellar, complete with an unused rainwater cistern. Dad dug out a lot of the big old stones and a large quantity of dirt, and replaced that with cement blocks and a poured concrete floor. My brother Jon and I got to help trowel that cement. In my memory, we did a lot of work. In reality it was probably very few hours of actual physical labor, knowing how kids always think they are doing a lot more than they actually are!

When Dad bought the house, we moved from one duplex to the other one right next door, which looked an awful lot like the first one. In fact, we had one guy who walked into our house by mistake, right into Dad’s bedroom and wondered why he was still in bed! Dad worked shift work, so he often had to try to sleep during the day, which must have been a real challenge in those days of no air conditioning and open windows letting in all the noises of kids playing outside, doors slamming, traffic on the busy street right out in front, and some guy walking into the wrong house!