Pop's basement

     When I was a very small kid one of the most wonderous adventures I had was going to my grandmother's farm in Bear Creek, Alabama. It was small but it was so different from the neighborhood existence I normally lived in that it seemed huge to me. Every aspect of it was a mystery.
     There was the big pond where I caught my first and, subsequently, what seemed like millions of fish over the period of my life. There was also a barn with a few farm animals, a chicken house, acres of gardens (not row crops but flowers they raised for sale) and most of all, the basement.
     My grandmother married Chester Gover later in life. He was a railroad signal worker for the L&N line and seemed to know how to do a little bit of everything. In fact, he made the dining room table, buffet and china cabinet that is sitting in our dining room right now. Everyone in the family called him Pop except my grandma. She called him Gover.
     His basement was an adventure like going on a treasure hunt. It had a coal bin, power tools on workbenches and stacks of scrap lumber. It also had feral cats that came and went as they pleased. I once named one Figaro and cornered and picked it up to pet it. I do not recommend this practice to anyone.
     But the most important thing in Pop's basement was the pirate's chest. Well, actually, the chest was just a big old wooden box that Pop threw odds and ends in. It would have a little toy whistle and a bent, rusty nail and maybe a piece of scrap metal he had dug up in the chicken yard. But to me, sifting through the items in the chest was as amazing as digging up Blackbeard's treasure.
     Pop never said much to me. I remember him as being stoic and stern, which would characterize most of the men and women who grew up in America during World War I and beyond. I do remember him saying "Don't shoot my redbirds" to me as I walked out with my Daisy Winchester model 94 BB gun on a big game safari one day.
    But in retrospect, I think Pop talked to me through the box. He had no other reason to save penny whistles and little army men he found around the place or a big old cat eye shooter marble except for me. The items were kind of like the toys Boo Radley stuck in the hollow tree for Scout and Jem to find in To Kill A Mockingbird. They were a secret dialog with someone who didn't know me that well and didn't really know how to have a conversation.
     Now I have a very young grandson. He seems to have a pretty vivid imagination like me. And as soon as he was born I started tossing little odds and ends into his chest for him to explore when he visits. We don't have a coal bin but, remembering the way I looked when I got in, that's probably a good thing.