Whether you called them basements or cellars, if you grew up in one of the northern states, your house probably had one.

The little bedroom community I grew up in was in northwestern Pennsylvania, where you either lived on top of the hill, at the bottom of the hill or in the middle of the hill. Our house was in the middle of the hill, which was great for my brothers and sisters and me because we had our own ski and sled riding slope in the back yard.

The foundation of our house was built of ceramic covered cement block, something you don't often see anymore. It kept our basement very dry so it was a good place to play on a rainy day. It also housed some really important stuff.

Troubling incident:Lake County Sheriff's Office investigating after antisemitic flyers delivered overnight

Reading material:Florida newspaperman re-releases 'Vampires, Gators, and Wackos,' his book about crazy crime

The most important thing in the basement was the old coal-burning furnace. At the beginning of winter the coal truck came by and coal was shoveled onto a chute through a window in the basement to a storage bin. The coal was that soft bituminous stuff that makes so much dust and smoke. The men shoveling it were always covered in black dust.

Down the center of the basement were three support columns made of the ceramic covered blocks. The cavities in those blocks were always full of the most interesting things, like Daddy's old clamp-on ice skates and the metal forms he used when he resoled our shoes.

Sometimes we found old keys in there and old light bulbs and flashlights that didn't work and forgotten toys.

I remember when Mom used an old wooden washing machine that she filled with a hose from the faucets. It had an electric agitator in the middle. On the side of the washer was a wringer with a crank handle. When you wrung out the clothes you had to turn the crank by hand into the rinse tub.

It was a big day when Mom got her first electric washer with an electric wringer and twin rinse tubs. She was instructing my older sister Jean on its operation and I was watching when she had to go upstairs for something. She told us not to touch the wringer while she was gone.

To me, that was like saying be sure to play with this new toy while my back is turned. Of course that is exactly what I did. If you ever put your fingers through one of those old electric wringers you know what pain is. Jean hit the release bar on top and set me free before I was crippled for life.

My dad was always good at using up things that were broken. He made a swing for Jean and me out of an old broken porch swing and hung it up on the rafters in the basement.

How we loved that swing. We would swing high enough to touch the rafters with our toes.

Daddy's basement workshop became the center for nut cracking along about November. Black walnut trees grew wild around the countryside, and as soon as they were ready, about late September or October, we would go out and gather as many nuts as we could.

They had to be dried and the outside hulls removed and dried again before we cracked them. Daddy always spread them out on the porch roof to dry. Our fingers would be stained brown for days after we removed the hulls. Then we had to wait again until they were dry enough to crack.

It was a tedious job, but the thoughts of the black walnut fudge Mom would make for Christmas kept us at it.

When our brother Herb was in high school, Daddy's workshop in the basement became his domain. He always worked at odd jobs and bought special electric tools for his projects.

I remember some of the items he made that became "must-haves" for all the high school kids. He made pins out of wood with names glued on them made out of alphabet soup letters.

He sent for and got long strips of colored plastic with holes in the middle of different sizes. He would cut them into ring sizes and glue on plastic cameos. Every girl in school wanted one. He kept us busy selling them. He eventually became an excellent cabinet maker.

In that old basement lie the trappings and dust of years past. The old Edison, crank record player and the old thick records, still playable, are stored there. The doll house my brother Herb made for one of our younger sisters is still there. His Flexible Flyer sled leans proudly against the wall along with the lesser sleds that belonged to the girls.

Some of the bikes are still standing and some are leaning against the wall next to the sleds. The shelves where Mom stored her canned goods are still there, behind the parts to the player piano we sang to with Daddy.

If you look hard enough you can still see remnants of the coal that used to heat our house.

How long has it been since you have been down in the basements of your childhood? Is it still there? Or do you still just have memories of it?

Nina Gilfert can be reached at ninagilfert@gmail.com