The Basement

     I don't think I have written about this before. Our basement is one place where no one would care to spend much time. Two rooms are usually wet as a spring which once supplied cool waters for dairy products, has never been totally cut off. Two other rooms are, needless to say quite damp. Only the built up and walled in furnace room, which sits in the basements center, is high and dry. So the basement is dank, dark, and gloomy to say the lest. The truely strange thing about our basement is the fact you cannot keep light bulbs down there. I have replaced the recepticles, checked the wiring, all to no avail. I've tried long life bulbs, low wattage bulbs, low wattage bulbs with the " button", even bulbs guarenteed for 10 years. None last longer than a month. I have bulbs upstairs with the "button" that  are still burning when you need them that are over 5 years old. But not in the basement; they appear to have burnt out. Yet I rarely go to the basement and my wife never does. I'm always very careful to turn out the lights when I come up from the basement. From now on I plan to use the cheapest bulbs I can find, because it really doesn't make any difference.