January 23, 2023

Good Morning Folks,

    I have spent a good portion of my life in the basement. In fact, I have a special relationship with basements. You see, my parents were one of the first families to move out of the old Italian enclave and build a house in Webster, New York….on two acres of land!  They were landowners!…in 1950! They had their own piece of property in the New World! Over the course of the next two years, they built their dream home finishing it when I was five years old. I still can remember my mom and dad nailing the boards in the floor of the dining area. It was a modest, three bedroom, one bathroom ranch house with a full basement where the kids could play. Perfect for the modern family: a boy, a girl and their parents. Of course that’s not what happened. With six children…four boys and two girls and I was the oldest… there were no rooms left…six kids….one bathroom. But the dramas of our lives always played out in the basement. Halloween spooky houses, ping pong tournaments, sleepovers, dart board, chemistry set/magic shows and even roller skating on the cement floors. Eventually my father built another bedroom in the darkest corner of the basement with only one tiny window. It was between furnace and the oil tank, so not the coziest place of spots, but he finished it off to look like a college dorm room complete with bookshelves and a place for our own record player. My brother Pat and I occupied that space for quite a while… It’s where we first listened to Bob Dylan’s "The Ballad of Hezekiah Jones" which formed our ideas on religion. We watched really old horror movies and Sherlock Holmes on “Chiller Theater" every Friday night. Eventually, I went off to college, and I thought basements would never be a part of my life again. Perhaps I would live in California where there are no basements at all! So after teaching school for many years my side business of antique musical instruments became a booming thing and of course, where did it all start?…the basement. I worked out of the basement from 1980 until 2006 when we opened the store. It was a beautiful existence of living and working in the same place. Get up in the morning, put on my deluxe bathrobe, my sunglasses, have breakfast and start answering the phone! Of course for much of that time we had a house with six bathrooms and only one kid so things were not quite as cramped. That two thousand square foot basement was the place that a lot of interesting transactions took place and some of the greatest instrument collections were both built and redistributed to folks around the world.

     In reality, basements are the foundation of our living space, the blocks upon which we build our family and roots. The stronger the foundation, the longer lasting the dwelling. I finally see that I’ve begun living my life as a "basement", that I have been providing the "foundation" for my family. So it is now in my 76th year that I am returning to the basement. Julie has carved out a little apartment for us in the basement of our daughter Grace’s new home. It will allow us work at the store Thursdays through Saturdays without having to drive back to Penn Yan. I will miss my little village and I’m not promising that I’m going to be at work all of those days, but I am determined to make my life in the basement as cozy, and as positive as possible.

  This Sunday Julie and I drove grandson Elliot back to school at SUNY New Paltz. We thought we would make a little vacation of it, but we couldn’t resist the temptation to drive a little further in search of more vintage instruments for the store. This cold and rainy Monday morning we are in Connecticut along the coast. We still have room in the van so if you are nearby and have some things for sale, contact us through the store or messenger or text. We will find a way to hook up. 

Best regards,

John

Julie is a great and dependable driver. This was our first road trip since I had my surgery and actually the first time we’ve been out since last summer. So thankful.

The icy mountainside kept at bay with netting.

Crossing the Hudson River