The Hideout

by Carolyn Dale

Published in Interconnections: A Whatcom Writes Anthology. Borderline Press, Bellingham, Washington, 2022

SKU 2370001595408 $14.99

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In these occasional comments, I like to explore curious aspects of the natural world that I encounter, usually while gardening, hiking or traveling.

Since I believe we humans are intrinsically part of that natural world, I also delve into how we experience this emotionally and imaginatively, which ties into our creative efforts. - Carolyn Dale

A hideout under the backstairs, that we discovered as kids, leads to wonder about its mysterious guests

In my childhood home, three doors led outside. We children used the front door for the sidewalks and street, and the back door for playing in our yard. We never used the third door, off the kitchen, and it was years before we discovered the fourth door.

Visitors stepped up on the front porch and rang the doorbell. But when the transient men came around the neighborhood asking for food or work, in those decades after World War II, they knocked at the kitchen door on the side of our house. We'd be at breakfast—my older brother, the babies, and our mother—after our father had left for the office. Quiet fell after the knocking, as we watched what my mother would do.

She paused from washing the dishes, dried her hands, and peered through the curtained window, then opened the door a crack. "We don't have any work for you," she said. But each time, she told the man to wait a moment, and she wrapped some bread and cheese or leftover meat into waxed paper and handed it through the slightly open door.

I peered from behind her skirt and saw thin white men, some young and some older; they accepted my mother's words and food politely and remained soft-spoken, even humble. Where did they go, when they left with their packets? Where did they sleep?

We'd heard of “hobo camps,” as they were called then, near the beaches and parks in Seattle. Yet my brother and I were about to discover a shelter even closer to home. I’ve thought of it recently, with news stories about housing for the homeless being built nearby, first of stainless steel container boxes, and later, constructed tiny homes. Maybe my old neighborhood will welcome this approach and accept their new neighbors.

My parents explained, back then, that these unfortunate men hadn't gotten their lives started properly because of the Great Depression, followed so shortly by the war. They had missed out on the normal opportunities of life because of these historic misfortunes—troubles shared by everyone in our society. They might even “get back on their feet,” if luckier people, like us, did what we could. That meant giving them food and an occasional odd job, and treating them with respect. "There but for fortune go you, or I," my parents would say.

My brother and I were getting old enough to explore our yard and the neighbors’ places with less and less supervision. From the kitchen, we clattered down the inside stairs to the basement, a far less civilized space than the upper floors. We ran through the dimness past the old furnace, the stored sleds, skis, and camping equipment, toward the windows and doorway on the far wall that led outside.

Soon we were taking shortcuts by making our own paths through gaps in fences, unlocked gates, and copses of trees, to get to friends’ houses or just to explore. One day, we forged through bracken fern and hazelnut trees on the north side of our own house, and for the first time I stood at ground level and gazed up at the kitchen door, a full story above. Because of the hillside, two stairways approached the porch; the one from the front was short, but the one from the back was long and rose well above our heads.

Wooden siding enclosed the area between the two stairways, forming a triangular shape with the kitchen door at its narrow top. The bottom stretched the width of the house, and a small door had been cut in the siding. It was big enough for a grown-up to crawl through, and it was secured with a little padlock.

"That's probably where they put wood, or coal, in the old days," I said. My parents had bought the house a few years earlier, and the furnace now burned oil.

"Maybe it's a camp, a secret hideout," my brother said.

We stared at it until we were so scared we had to dash to the safety of the backyard. Weeks passed, it seems, or maybe just days, before my brother nudged me, flashlight in hand, and said he was going to open that little door and look inside. I tagged along, enjoying the delicious thrill of fear.

"What about the lock?" I asked, as we crouched in the bracken fern, whispering. The little doorway looked as though someone had simply sawed out the shape in the siding, attached two hinges, and hung the lock.

"It's broken." My brother yanked on the lock and pulled the door open slightly. It swung easily across a fan of bare, packed earth. Clearly it had been used recently.

"What if somebody's in there?"

My brother tipped the flashlight to shine its beam around the interior, and I peeked over his shoulder. "It's okay. I'm going in. You stay out here and keep watch."

Soon I heard a click and saw dim, swinging light. He had pulled the little chain on a bulb hanging from the floor of the porch overhead. Beyond this bit of wiring, there was no connection between this shelter and the inside of our house.

"Somebody's been living in here," he said, backing out and sitting on his heels.

"Let me see!" I crowded in and saw a thin mattress on wooden pallets over the packed earth, an old wool blanket or two neatly spread on top. Some makeshift wooden shelves held a coffee mug, playing cards, a compass, and a few tiny books or journals.

After a few glances, I backed out, confused and frightened. What if the man who lived here came back just then? My brother reached in to turn off the light, and without speaking, we rushed away.

We loved the secrecy and danger, and since our parents didn't know to forbid us from going inside, we could scare ourselves pleasantly at any time by returning for a visit. And we did. Occasionally we found different furnishings and books; apparently some hobos, as we called them, had more possessions than others. Usually we couldn't read the language of these books but could glean from the illustrations that they were religious in nature.

Within a few years, my father got a new job and we moved to a different city. My parents sold the house, and when movers came to pack our possessions, we children were asked to put together a box of the things in our rooms that mattered most to us. I had no idea how to approach the task, but I thought of the hideout and the spare, essential items stored there. Carefully, I chose my most important belongings, including several books.

We did not tell our parents about the hideout then, nor at any later time that I recall. Of course we wanted to guard our childhood game, but I think our silence grew out of something more. Perhaps it was the respect we'd been taught for the nature of misfortunes at the time, or simply respect for the privacy of another person's home. Though small and bare, it was attached to our house, and it seemed a genuine, functioning part of our neighborhood, even of our large, prosperous, and growing city.

I drove past the house a few weeks ago, not having seen it for years. I’d heard it was remodeled, and it stood in fall sunshine crisply white with fresh paint and new pillars on the porch. The tall trees still guarded the front, sheltering the route to the side, toward the kitchen door. Recently I learned that transients used to mark places to let others know where a generous person might give bread and cheese, an odd job for pay, or even where a shelter offered a dry and safe place to sleep. Now I wonder if those trees still hold any such marks from long ago, any sign beyond memory of the little hideout that connected the city’s homeless to my own former home.