The hidden room

A wooden staircase led to an unfinished basement in our Lake Oswego house. In the basement was the laundry room, a door about halfway up a concrete wall that led to a dirt-floored crawl space under the house, and a wooden door with an old-fashioned wooden latch. Tommy and I had explored the crawl space with a flashlight and found nothing interesting. But we had never opened the wooden door. What was in there? We had to find out. There was no handle, so I lifted the latch and pulled it towards me. The latch had been attached to the door with a leather thong, and the ancient leather gave way when I pulled. Standing there with the latch in my hand, I saw that the door had been nailed shut. This door must hide truly important treasures. We got our dad to help us pull the rusty old nails out. With a crowbar, dad pried the door open. The room emitted a damp, cool, musty breath.
We peered into the dark space, holding our breaths. In the flashlight’s beam we beheld a thick curtain of white cobwebs hanging from a low ceiling. I shrieked and hid behind dad as he used a broom to clear the cobwebs, revealing a small room lined with wooden shelves. On the shelves sat row upon row of jars, some empty and some filled with gray globes that had once been fresh peaches or tomatoes. Someone had carefully peeled and canned all this fruit, then stored the jars in this dark place and abandoned them. Why? The room was silent and we could find no other clues about who had last opened it, or when they’d nailed it shut.
Dad said we could use the room for a hideout. It had no light, not even a bare bulb, so he drilled holes in the door in a large circle like a clock. I collected the cores from that drilling project: sturdy wooden spools that I shellacked and strung on a length of jute and wore like a string of pearls. Tommy and I played in the hideout a few times but grew tired of it; eventually mom cleaned it out and filled it with the glass jars of cherries, peaches, and applesauce that she canned each summer.