I went through the same old wooden door, and came into the house. The same paint colors on the walls, the same birch paneling in the living room, the same carpeting on the stairs, the same radiators, the same everything. Wow. And, in the dining room, was the same floor/door leading into the basement. Caught up in an amazing reverie and expecting to see my grandmother in the kitchen frying up pierogies in lard and asking me to go into the basement for some bottles of soda, I went down into the basement.
Now in the basement as soon as you make a left from the narrow stairwell, is a sink, sideboard, and medicine cabinet....the shower long since gone. My grandfather and great-grandfather were coal miners, having worked on the coal breakers since they were little. The bathroom in the basement was designed so that they could clean up without tracking soot through the entire house, and my grandmother had "runways" of plastic carpet runner that went from the back kitchen door through the basement. It was all as I remember it.
