I grew up in a farmhouse out in the middle of rural Pennsylvania. The house itself, like many other houses built in the late 18th century, was built primarily for function with little thought given to conveniences or any foresight into what eventually would become standard building practices. Plumbing was an afterthought, the door frames were all different sizes, there wasn’t much in the way of insulation, and I’m pretty positive there wasn’t a truly square corner anywhere in the entire house.
The one thing that stood out the most to me during my childhood was my closet. The ceiling of my closet had crude door cut into it, closed off only by a panel of wood that would slide over the opening. This door led to the attic, but had no readily convenient method of access as it required a ladder and some body contortion to really get to. Since the house had plenty of storage space elsewhere and the attic required going through my room with a ladder to access, my parents took an “out of sight, out of mind” approach to the attic and it was more or less forgotten for years at a time. Every so often somebody would mention it, and grand plans would be made to move things up there for storage, but in the end nobody actually would want to deal with it and I never once saw anybody actually put forth the effort to get up there.
I wasn’t quite as quick to dismiss the attic, though...
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