Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Another Day Another Mystery…..

Okay, whether good or bad, the old tiles are gone.

Now we have a mystery on or hands.

Remember that pic above I said to remember? Well here it is below, only this time enhanced.

The yellow line outlines a perfect rectangle. It is obviouse that something had sat here at some pont - what?

You will also notice another square outlined in red. There are two boards there that look like either a trapdoor that's been nailed shut or a hole that's been covered. The latter is more than likely what it is. When I look at the spot from underneath (in the basement) there is a rugh hune hole there?

Now here is the second part of the mystery.

Right below the rough-cut hole in the kitchen is a hole in the basement floor. We have never known what this whole was for until an elderly lady (who still lives in town) told us about the basement.

She said that as a little girl she use to play in the basement and they had a washtub set-up that drained into the hole.

Okay, that makes sense.....

Then she told us that during prohibition moonshine was made in the basement (customers came to the side door leading to the basement to buy - that's another story). We later found out that the hole had been enlarged to make it easier to dump the booze, quickly, if necessary.

Here's a look down the hole. It's a good 6' deep and enters into an underground cistern.





The cistern isn't deep, but we have no idea how wide, or long, it is.

So, the Mystery is - what created the rectangular shape in the kitchen and why was it in the middle of the prep area?

Hmmm....any thoughts or ideas?


Cheers!
Larry~

2 comments:

Sandy said...

Maybe the rough-hewn hole in the floor was a "pass-through" to the basement for "bathtub gin" that made and then bottled in the kitchen. They could have passed it through the hole to the basement instead of going up and down the stairs with it and they kept the hole hidden with a phony cupboard, perhaps?

Larry said...

Hadn't thought of that. Very well could have boon done that way.

My first thought was a sink with a direct drain before the septic tank was installed.