.

Don’t Go Near the Basement

By Chuck Semenuk

School had finished for the summer. It had been two weeks and Ken Donovan still hadn’t landed a job. The summer was going to suck big time without having a few bucks to spend. Ken would be seventeen years old in a few months. There didn’t seem to be many job opportunities for teenagers this year. As Ken walked back to the garage to get the lawnmower, his buddy Rick Parker pulled into the driveway with his ‘51 Ford. It was a beauty; bull nosed, fender skirts, whitewall tires and ’54 Oldsmobile Starfire wheel covers. The candy apple red paint job sparkled in the sun and the dual exhausts with glass-pack mufflers produced a beautiful rumble as it came to a stop next to him.

“Hey Ken! Did you find a job yet?”

Ken walked over to the car. “No. It looks like a lost cause. Nobody’s hiring this year. Have you had any luck?”

“My aunt works in the office at the old Harris-Jones Paint Company over on the east side. She said that they need a couple of guys for the labor gang. The jobs are ours if we want them,” said Rick.

“Really? I don’t know. That place has a bit of a reputation” exclaimed Ken. “It might be a coincidence but if you remember the newspaper article last year, there have been three kids that turned up missing over the last five years. They all had summer jobs at the paint factory.”

“The cops were never able to make a connection between the paint factory and those guys turning up missing” argued Rick. “They punched out at the end of the day but never got home. You can wimp out if you want to but I need a job.”

“I didn’t say that I wouldn’t take the job. It’s just a little spooky, that’s all. What do we have to do to get the jobs?”

Rick got out of the car. “Let me use your phone to call my aunt and tell her we’re taking the jobs. Then we can run down town and get our work permits.”

####

Ken and Rick arrived at Harris-Jones at 6:00 AM on the dot. They were ushered into the personnel office where they filled out the necessary paperwork. A stout looking man with graying hair and a big smile entered the office. “Good morning, boys. My name is Frank Gordon. Are you ready to go to work?” Frank Gordon was the General Forman, having worked at Harris-Jones most of his adult life. The boys immediately took a liking to Frank. Little did they know that they would regret that decision. “You’ll be unloading trucks and railroad cars, and moving materials around the plant as needed. Come with me. I’ll introduce you to your group leader.”

Frank led the boys down a set of stairs to the factory basement. The air was nice and cool, compared to the rest of the factory. The building was very old, built in the late 1800’s. Except for the offices, the building had no air conditioning. Fans struggled to circulate fresh air through the open windows in the 90+ degree heat.

“Boys, this is Willie Dudd. He’ll be assigning your duties.” Willie grunted a hello. “I’ll leave you with Willie. Lunch is at 11:30 AM; be back at your work assignment at 12:00. We’re working overtime every day so you’ll be working until 3:30 PM, possibly later. You’ll get time and a half for anything over 8 hours. You’ll take your breaks whenever Willie says. Any questions?”

“None from me,” replied Ken.

“I’m good,” said Rick.

Frank paused, and with a decidedly somber note to his voice be said “Be careful, boys. There are a lot of ways to get hurt around here.” He quickly turned and went back up the stairs.

Willie stared blankly at the boys while he stuffed a plug of tobacco in his cheek. Willie was known as a “good ol’ boy in some circles but he had a mean streak a mile wide. “C’mon, I’ll give you guys a locker to put your lunch in.” Willie led them down a dimly lit isle, 50 pound bags of powdered paint pigments stacked nearly to the ceiling giving the area a cave-like feeling. When they reached the locker area, a half-dozen more boys were waiting for their assignments.

Willie pointed out two empty lockers. “You can put your crap in there. I expect ya’ll to do what you’re told and don’t be givin’ me any lip. Do ya think you boys can handle that?”

Ken and Rick nodded in agreement. As Willie led them toward the other boys, Rick mumbled softly; “This guy’s a total ass. I don’t like him.”

“We don’t have to like him. We need the jobs,” whispered Ken.

####

It didn’t take long for the boys to “learn the ropes.” The tasks were not rocket science; they just required a strong back and a willingness to get dirty. Health and safety regulations in the mid 1950’s were pretty much non-existent or rarely enforced if they did exist. Workers on the labor gang at Harris-Jones usually went home at day’s end colored with whatever they were working with; various paint pigments, shellac, even red lead. No face masks were worn to keep from breathing in the dangerous dust and solvent fumes.

Willie would hand out the job assignments first thing in the morning and had a knack for being generally pretty scarce the rest of the day unless Frank Gordon needed something else done. The boys on “the gang” usually ate their lunch in the basement. It was much cooler there and they could relax and BS until time to go back to work. If Willie wasn’t around, he was usually the main topic of discussion. He would take breaks with the boys to make sure they got back to work right away but only had lunch with them occasionally.

“Rick swallowed a bite of his sandwich. “Where the hell does Willie disappear to?”


“It’s pay day. You won’t see him for the rest of the day,” laughed a boy called Jimmy Crocker. “Over in bay D, there’s a basement window that is always unlocked. On pay day Willie gets his check in the morning. At lunch time he sneaks out the window and goes to the bar down the street to cash his check and have a few beers. He sneaks back in before quitting time so he can punch out.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Ken.

“Nope. Every payday just like clockwork, Willie is out that window and down to the bar.

“Show me that window,” said Rick.

The group of boys walked over to bay D where Rick looked at the lock on the window. “You know, this latch is a little loose. I bet if the window closed just right, it would lock all by itself. Looky there,” smiled Rick. “It locked by itself.”

“Hey man, are you sure you want to get old Willie riled up?”

“Why not?” said Rick. “He’s been singling me and Ken out for the crappiest jobs since day one. If he finds out, I’ll take the heat. I can be just as big a bastard as he is.”

“We won’t tell,” said Jimmy. “It's nice to see that someone else has the cahones to take on Willie. I was number one on his list until you two came.”

The next morning, Willie was in a surly mood. The boys noticed him fiddling with the window latch in bay D. He “eyeballed” Rick and then Jimmy but didn’t say anything.

Rick exchanged a brief grin with Jimmy and proceeded to his assignment.

A few paydays passed with the window sometimes mysteriously being latched. Word filtered down that Willie was being chastised by Frank Gordon for repeatedly “forgetting” to punch the time clock at the end of the day.

####

There was no shortage of strange characters at Harris-Jones. The men who ran the two freight elevators were best described as “scary.” A tall Swede by the name of Lars ran the elevator located in the front part of the factory. He was obsessed by death and would relate stories about it any time the boys had to move materials between various floors and the basement. Between calls, he would stop the elevator between floors and turn out the lights. Speculation about what he was doing up there in the dark covered a wide range of ideas, none of them good.

Ken and Rick had heard tales about Victor, the old man who ran the freight elevator in the rear of the plant but had not yet had the pleasure of riding with him. The other boys would only say “Wait until old Victor gets you in his elevator. You’d better keep your belt cinched up tight!”

One day the two boys were assigned to move a truckload of 55 gallon barrels of linseed oil from the front loading dock to a storeroom in the basement. Using 2-wheeled barrel trucks, they had moved roughly half the load to the basement utilizing Lars’ elevator. Reaching the elevator with two more barrels, they were greeted with a darkened shaft and no elevator. A hand-written sign on the gate said “Out Of Order.”

“Crap!” exclaimed Ken. What do we do now?” Willie happened to be walking by and exclaimed “Use your head, losers! Truck ‘em back to Victor’s elevator.”

Ken and Rick trucked their barrels through the plant to the rear freight elevator. Reaching their destination, they again found a dark elevator shaft. Rick put his head against the gate and peered into the darkness. It was too dark to see anything. “Damn!” said Rick. “I don’t want to think about what he’s doing up there in the dark.”

He pressed the call button twice. Suddenly, a light became visible from above and the motor began to whir. The car came to a stop in front of them as Victor put his face near the gate and peered out at them.

“Where you goin’?” asked Victor.

“Basement,” said Ken.

Victor raised the gate and the boys wheeled their loads inside. Once the gate was lowered, Victor started the car moving ever so slowly downward while he again switched off the light.

“Damn, damn, damn!” mumbled Rick. “I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I,” Ken replied.

The elevator reached the basement where a dim light shown through the gate. Victor looked through the slats in the gate, studying the room intently. Turning to the boys he said, “You have to be careful. A bad fairy lives here.”

Suddenly, he flipped on the light and threw up the gate, screaming and charging out into the basement. After chasing some imaginary creature, Victor returned to the elevator. The boys stood there, eyes wide and mouths hanging open.

“You can come out now. I chased him away.” Ken and Rick quickly wheeled their barrels out of the car. Victor got in, slammed the gate down and disappeared into the darkness between floors.

Still standing in the dim light at the gate, Rick could only manage to say, “Wow! What the hell just happened?”

Finally, Ken said “I don’t know about you but I’m going to stow this barrel and get to the other end of the basement with the rest of the guys. I’m not making this trip again today. We can hide from Willie for the rest of the day.”

“Sounds good to me, bud. Let’s get out of here.”

####

The following morning Ken, Rick and Jimmy were assigned to work in a place called the “small batch” room. Normal sized production runs were mixed in huge vats, the tops being in the mixing room on the second floor with the bottoms of the vats being located in the filling room on the first floor. The mixed paint was then piped to a conveyor system where cans were automatically filled, sealed and labeled.

Small batches were mixed in 200 gallon capacity vats on wheels, the mixing being done with a motor on a long shaft clamped to the top lip of the vat. The assembly was reminiscent of a giant milk shake mixer of the type found at soda fountains and lunch counters.

The actual paint mixing process was set up and overseen by one of the men trained to blend paint according to a standard recipe for the type of paint and color. Ken was filling one gallon cans and sealing them while Rick and Jimmy applied labels and packaged the cans, four to a carton.

It was important to use extreme care when moving a full vat since they tended to be rather top heavy. The factory had wooden floors which made it hard to move anything heavy. The isle ways were covered with steel plate to provide a smooth surface for moving materials but over the years, the floor had settled and some plates had gaps between them.

With the first batch finished Rick rolled the empty vat out of the way while Jimmy began to roll a full vat with the next order into place. Willie suddenly came charging down the aisle, apparently on some sort of important mission.

“Come on, flunky. Get the hell out of my way!”

As Jimmy struggled to get the vat out of the way, the two leading wheels caught on a gap in the steel plate. Jimmy pushed a little harder. The wheels stuck fast and the vat started to tip. As the paint sloshed forward it reached the point of no return; the bottom kicked out and over it went. Two hundred gallons of Baby Butt Pink paint flowed down the aisle in an awesome pink wave. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, the boys couldn’t help but laugh. Willie stood there staring at his pink shoes and pant cuffs.

Finally, Willie’s voice returned. “You three stooges get the saw dust and shovels and clean up this mess.” Looking at his feet he said “Dammit! I just got these shoes. You guys will pay for this.” He stomped off down the aisle, leaving a trail of pink foot prints along the way.”

####

The boys did their best to not get Willie ticked off for awhile. Luckily, the paint was latex based and cleaned up fairly well with soap and water and some elbow grease. . The following day, they finished their first assignment and were taking morning break with the rest of the crew. Willie sat on a stack of 50 pound bags of leaded pigment with his thermos of coffee. In later years, as health and safety regulations developed, the boys would wonder if part of Willie’s problems were caused by inhaling and absorbing the lead dust and other chemicals over the years. He poured a cup of coffee and stared at Ken, Rick and Jimmy as they took a seat.

“Jimmy, you need to get over to stores section K12. A lot of that paint you dumped ran through the cracks in the floor and dripped all over cartons of paint. You’ll need to repackage them. See if you can do it without messing up.”

Turning toward Ken and Rick, “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, there’s a box car up in front of the conveyor. After break, I need you two to open it up and unload it.”

The railroad passed above the street that the factory was located on, resulting in the rail siding accessing the factory on the second floor. The railroad’s night turn had spotted the box car with its door in front of the conveyor. The conveyor was approximately twenty feet in length, with the end terminating at an opening in the factory wall. Inside, a metal chute spiraled all the way down to the basement. The chute ended at a large platform where workers would pick off the bags of pigment and load them onto pallets.

It was after 10 o’clock in the morning and the car doors had not been opened. It was extremely hot in the car, the hot sun beating on the metal roof. The boys opened both doors to get some ventilation going. Working from the area in front of the open door wasn’t bad but as the car began to empty, a worker would have to carry the fifty pound bags to the conveyor, the distance increasing to about twenty feet by the time they reached the ends of the car. A standard box car was forty feet long. Each boy worked to opposite ends of the car.

Lunch time arrived none too soon. The cool basement was a welcome relief. Unfortunately lunch break passed quickly.

“Well, time to get back to the oven,” said Ken.

“Yeah, you two need to work a little faster. A little heat won’t hurt you,” sneered Willie.

The two boys made their way back to the box car. It was a considerable ways from the front part of the basement to the unloading conveyor on the second floor near the rear of the factory. Arriving at the conveyor, Rick reached for his back pocket.

“Damn! I left my gloves back in the basement.”

“I guess you’d better start walking. Willie’s probably down at the bottom of the chute waiting for us to start sending down more bags,” exclaimed Ken.

Never one to pass up an adventure, Rick climbed up on the conveyor. “I’m taking the short cut.”

Before Ken could say anything, Rick disappeared, feet first down the chute.

It wasn’t long before Rick walked up to the box car, gloves in hand and a huge grin on his face. “Man that was one hell of a ride. You should have seen the look on Willie’s face when I came sliding out the bottom of the chute. He was all ready to grab a bag and throw it on a pallet when I came out.”

“What did he say?”

“I don’t remember all the words but it was pretty colorful,” smiled Rick. He was really P O’d.”

The boys climbed up into the box car. Soon they had each worked about fifteen feet into their end of the car. The buzzer on the wall over the chute opening rang constantly and they could hear Willie’s voice screaming, “Faster. Faster, you losers. More bags.”

Two men from another department were catching a breath of fresh air nearby. They walked up to the box car door and watched for a moment, listening to Willie’s tirade of obscenities.

One of them smiled and said, “Hey! How would you guys like a little help? We’ll send him all the bags his black heart can handle.”

“Sure! Come on up,” answered Ken.

The men climbed up into the car and the four of them started throwing bags on the conveyor as fast as they could, running from each end of the car with a fifty pound bag and back again for another. There was barely ten inches between bags as they went down the conveyor. Suddenly, they noticed that one bag had turned sideways on the belt, the end hanging over the edge of the conveyor. They watched in awe as a guy wire supporting the middle of the conveyor neatly sliced the end off the bag. It fell to the floor as the rest of the bag disappeared into the chute, a cloud of white dust hanging near the opening.

A split second later, the buzzer began ringing again and Willie’s excited voice screamed every vulgar phrase imaginable.

“Oh, oh. It looks like break time is over. We have to go,” said one of the men as they jumped out of the box car and quickly ran back to their work area.

“You two losers better get down here now,” screamed Willie up the chute.

As Ken and Rick entered the room at the bottom of the chute, they tried hard to suppress their laughter. It looked as if there had been a snow storm. Everything was covered in white dust, especially Willie. Seeing their smiling faces, he was at a momentary loss for words.

“Who was up there in the box car with you?” demanded Willie.

“Nobody was there. Just the two of us,” said Rick trying to wipe the grin off his face.

“I don’t believe that!” stuttered Willie. “You jokers get some brooms and clean up this mess before you leave today. Pushing through the smiling crowd that had gathered, Willie strutted off to the wash room to clean himself up.

####

By the following morning, the story about the “snow storm” had spread throughout the factory. As the boys entered the employee door, Frank Gordon gave them a huge grin as he passed by. Unfortunately, Willie was a master at getting even. He assigned Ken and Rick the worst jobs he could think of. During the heating season, the railroad would deliver hopper cars full of coal to feed the factory boilers. The service track was at the end of the same spur as the conveyor location. Here, the track continued out onto a steel trestle where the coal would be dumped into the bin below. For the next two days, the boys spent their time chipping rusty scale from the steel beams above the coal bin. It was a filthy job and it turned out to be the hottest, most humid days of the summer.

They were grateful for the coolness of the basement at morning break time. As the guys from the labor gang relaxed with a cool drink, Willie stretched out in his usual spot and poured himself a cup of coffee from his thermos. The thermos was a tall, one quart size. Next to his beer on payday afternoons, Willie loved his coffee. Watching him pour another cup, Rick smiled to himself as an idea flashed into his mind. Before going back to work, he had a brief conversation with Jimmy.

During lunch break Willie and the gang returned to the welcome temperature of the basement. Willie downed another cup of coffee but did not eat his lunch.

“I have something to do. Make sure ya’ll get back to work on time.”

As Willie disappeared up the stairs, Jimmy reached into his pocket and pulled out a rather large steel ball. Steel balls of various sizes were used in a rotating drum to grind and blend various pigments for paint.

“What are you going to do with this?” asked Jimmy.

Rick opened Willie’s thermos and carefully put the steel ball inside. It was slightly smaller than the thermos opening.

“When Willie pours the rest of his coffee at afternoon break, he’ll have to tip it enough that the ball should come rolling out into his cup and splash his coffee all over,” explained Rick.

Ken laughed. “I can’t wait to see the look on his face.”

Jimmy shook his head. “You guys like to live dangerously. Wish I’d have thought of that,” he added.

####

At afternoon break, the boys in the gang positioned themselves so they could get a good view of Willie pouring his coffee. Willie was late coming down for break and the boys began to wonder if they would miss the show. Finally, Willie came down the stairs and sat down, unscrewing the lid of his thermos. The boys could only watch in awe as Willie raised the thermos to his lips and tipped it up to drain the last of the coffee. Suddenly, Willie screamed in agony as the steel ball crashed through his front teeth. Holding his mouth, Willie ran up the stairs to the wash room.

“Damn!” said Jimmy. “That has to really hurt.”

“Oh, man. I never expected him to drink straight from the thermos like that,” exclaimed Rick. “Willie’s a jerk but I never would have hurt him like that on purpose.”

“There’s gonna be hell to pay over this,” said Ken.

Rick’s face was white. “I’ll have to admit that I did it.”

“Are you kidding?” asked Jimmy. “You’ll get fired for sure and Willie will probably come after you with a baseball bat. You’ll be better off to keep your mouth shut. None of us will tell.”

####

Willie didn’t come to work for the rest of the week. Frank took over the task of making work assignments in Willie’s absence. No mention was made regarding the missing Willie. Curiously, Jimmy hadn’t come to work for the past two days. The boys on the labor gang were called to a conference room near the front office. Frank introduced them to Police Detective Dan Watson.

“Hello boys. I’m afraid that I have some unpleasant business to talk to you about. Your co-worker Jimmy Crocker never came home from work two days ago. His family hasn’t heard from him since he left for work that morning. Did Jimmy say anything to indicate that he was having problems of some sort? Did he mention not going straight home from work?”

The boys looked at one another and shook their heads. Rick thought about mentioning the incident with the steel ball in Willie’s thermos but changed his mind. Surely Frank would have already told Detective Watson about it if it were pertinent.


The detective handed his business card to each boy as they left the conference room.

“If you think of anything at all, or hear anything regarding Jimmy, please call me at the number on my card day or night. Thank you for your time.”

Ken and Rick returned to their assignment where they were unloading barrels from a box car located at the dock next to the conveyor.

“What do you think happened to Jimmy?” asked Rick. “That makes four guys who disappeared from this place. Do you think someone here has something to do with it?”

“I don’t know,” said Ken. “I can think of a couple of guys that I wouldn’t trust as far as I can throw them. Lars is as queer as a three dollar bill, always talking about death and dying. Victor, he’s damn right spooky. He scares the hell out of me.”

“How about Willie?” exclaimed Rick. “He’s downright mean. Maybe he’s getting even for the thermos bottle incident.”

They couldn’t get Jimmy’s disappearance off their minds. As they were leaving work at the end of the day, Frank caught them at the door.

“I’m glad that I caught you before you left. I know tomorrow is Saturday but I need you to come in for a few hours tomorrow. With Willie and Jimmy out, we’re a little behind. I’m sure you can use the extra money; time and a half, you know.”

They really didn’t want to come in but the extra money sounded good.

“Okay. We’ll see you in the morning.”

####

Saturday dawned rainy and gloomy. The old factory seemed ominous against the dark sky. The place was nearly empty; only a few people were apparently in. Not many lights had been turned on. The boys reported to Frank’s office. Dressed in baggy work clothes, he motioned to them.

“Follow me, boys. I’ve got something good in mind for you.”

They followed Frank through the factory to the rear freight elevator. The gate was already open and they walked inside. Frank took the car down to the basement and opened the gate. He led them to a dimly lit store room that they had not seen before. There were six barrels in the room. Four were closed and two were open and empty.

“What are we doing here?” asked Ken.

“Well boys, I have to admit that you’ve given me a few laughs but, you’ve caused me a lot of grief with Willie.”

“What do you mean?” said Rick.

Frank motioned toward the closed barrels. “Have a seat. I guess that I’d better tell you the whole story. A few years ago, my daughter decided to run off and marry that bum Willie. I’m sure that you’ve seen enough of Willie to figure out that he’d never accomplish anything on his own. For my daughter’s sake, I had to give Willie a job. Unfortunately, when Willie isn’t happy, my daughter isn’t happy. That makes my wife unhappy. Everything rolls down hill and I end up being very unhappy. Know what I mean?”

Ken shrugged his shoulders. “What does that have to do with us?”

Frank smiled. “The two of you and Jimmy have been the source of a lot of Willie’s unhappiness lately. Obviously, my daughter and my wife are making me unhappy.”

“Do you know where Jimmy went?” asked Rick.

“Jimmy didn’t go anywhere. As a matter of fact, you’re sitting on him.”

Rick jumped off the barrel. “Damn! He’s dead?”

“I’m afraid so. Just like the rest of them,” he waved his hand toward the barrels. “Those two empties are for you.” Frank pulled a pistol from the pocket of his work pants.”

They boys were terrified. Frank was the last person that they would ever suspect of killing those boys. Frank’s face took on a crazed appearance.

“Now comes the fun part. Who wants to go first? Down on your knees and face the wall.”

“What? No way!” objected the boys.

“I can make it more painful if you like. Where do you want it first? The stomach? The chest? It’s going to end the same way.”

Suddenly a figure darted out of the shadows. Victor struck Frank with a club, again and again.

“No more! No more!” Victor shouted as he continued to strike Frank over the head. When Frank was silent and no longer moving, he dropped the club to the floor. Victor turned to Ken and Rick. Now looking almost childlike, he said “No more! The bad fairy is dead. He can’t hurt anyone now.”