Village life: Why I love my attic

He said the stairs to the attic “bear the mark of ascension to a more tranquil solitude.” He said (speaking with pre-Sixties gender exclusion for which I forgive him) “we can no longer remain … men with only one story.” Bachelard thought we all need niches, corners — nests for daydreaming.

So I’m writing this in my attic, sitting cross-legged on the dusty plank floor. To my left is a pile of rolled up pink insulation, to my right is the opening for the ladder and the scary ladder itself, at the moment anchored on the landing below.

The only light is a single bulb attached to the peaked beam. It doesn’t throw enough illumination into the corners, so I’m a bit uneasy. I can only stand up in the middle.

But the attic smells great – woody and not at all mildewed, as if the beams up here, protected from all the foofaroo of human life below since the house was built in 1935, have aged more slowly.

Anyway, despite a bit of healthy caution, I’m up here because I like attics. I love this specific attic. I love that there’s a trap door with a blue strap hanging down, and I like that to get up there we have to scare ourselves silly pulling down the trap door and the ladder that screeches every time on its old metal rollers.

I like that houses in the Midwest almost all have attics. It gives us something extra, another dimension to explore.

I spent several years of my childhood sleeping in the attic of a big brick parsonage in Ohio. My parents thought it was a bit odd that I liked it up there, with its plastered slope ceiling, tiny half-moon window, and my grandma’s antique bed with a horsehair mattress. But I relished the privacy.

Among other luxuries, I discovered my first erotic literature up there, burrowed under a quilt, startled to discover in The Song of Solomon lines like “A bundle of myrrh is my beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts,” and “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew and my locks with the drops of the night.”

This was great! I’ve liked attics ever since.

My attic is already about a quarter full of stuff. I survey my ironwood kava bowl from Tonga, three feet across, cracked and unusable from the dry furnace air of my first winter in Flint; my high school yearbooks; a letter to myself bitterly explaining why an old boyfriend dumped me. Some day I’ll throw it all away.

And then, a surprise bonanza — a single box of books left by somebody else. How could I have missed this? Brushing off dust, I lift out a treasure trove.

First, Dick Kent, Fur Trader, copyright 1937, by Milton Richards. On the frontispiece, a dashing fellow with a belted plaid coat, knee-high boots and a fedora. He’s holding back another guy who looks like a Mountie at the window of a log cabin. Inside, three bad-looking dudes hunch over a secret. The caption: “Dick, happening to glance through the window, drew back suddenly with a cry of surprise.”

And here’s Six Years in the Malay Jungle by Carveth Wells, copyright 1923, beginning with this fabulous first sentence, “One morning in May, after getting out of bed on the wrong side and making the baby cry, I determined to quit my job of Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and look for something dangerous.”

And then, my instant favorite, Bomba, the Jungle Boy, or, the Old Naturalist’s Secret, copyright 1926, by Roy Rockwood. In its fourth paragraph lies this delicious sentence, “From a distance came the screams of parrots and the howling of monkeys, but otherwise the jungle was silent.”

Finally, a white cigar box which once held 50 Very Mild Class E Geronimo Sports. Disappointed to find it empty, I nonetheless realize it’s a piece of history. Its label says “Spaniola’s Pipe and Tobacco Company, 647 S. Saginaw, Phone CE 3-9389.”

And I know that shop is still there — Paul Spaniola is 94, a downtown survivor, and according to his daughter, he still comes in occasionally for a few hours’ work. Dan, his son, runs the store and you still could buy a sweet cigar any day from Paul’s Pipe Shop if you wanted to. The phone number, though, is an old one.

My visit to my attic has yielded a major cache. Happily but gingerly, I go down butt first on each of the ladder’s narrow rungs, the books and cigar box in my arms. This is what attics are for — more stories.

Bachelard undoubtedly would be pleased.

Jan Worth-Nelson has lived within walking distance of East Village Magazine since 1981, and prides herself on increasing crankiness. Her 2006 Peace Corps novel Night Blind is widely available. You can find many other examples of her essays, fiction and poetry on her web site, www.janworth.com, and her blog, http://nightblindblog.blogspot.com/index.html. She teaches writing at UM-Flint.