Sometimes we are exposed to dark secrets when we are little. It isn’t until we are much older when we realize what we were exposed to. Ah. When I was a young boy, perhaps five or six years old, I used to play around in our neighborhood. There is nothing strange about that. All the children did it…

As a Young Boy

Children play. That is how they learn. At that time, childhood was spent either outside alone in “free ranging” play or in front of the television set.

Television was big, but still had a lot of room to grow. We would watch “Diver Dan”, and “Hoody Doody”, “Soopy Sales” while our parents were busy. At night we would watch “Gilligan’s Island”, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”, “The Twilight Zone”, “The Rat Patrol” and “Lassie”. This was at a time during my early formative years. Naturally, our television was black and white.

At that time I lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut. If there is one thing that I can say about it is this; it was quite different from what it is now. At that time, it looked a little like “Mayberry R.F.D”. Our neighborhood was all Caucasian. My school mates were mostly Catholic, and the immigrant children that I played with came from Germany, Poland and France. Today, well it looks quite different indeed.

Where we lived was a community of duplex apartments that catered to the rising middle class. Our parents, in the early Beatle years (early 1960’s), let us play outside and be children. There was none of that contemporaneous perpetual observation and structured play. We were free to roam and engage in unstructured play.

Which, of course, was something that we most certainly did.

The Abandoned Building Next Door

Adjacent to our housing complex was an abandoned flower garden. It was wedged between our housing complex and a (then new) school complex known as the Kennedy Center. There, we would play our childhood games, and explore the ruins. We would play “Army” and shoot at each other with plastic guns. We all had snap-cap pistols that resembled six-shooters. We would wear them in a holster that draped around our waist. We also had various larger toy arms. The Thompson tommy-gun was popular, as was a M1 carbine, and my favorite was the M14 with action sound. If we didn’t have our toy guns with us, we would cut down some branches with our cub scout knives and pretend that they were guns instead.

There, we would hunt each other in the brambles, bushes and ambush others from the tree tops. It was a time of running around on broken glass and exposed nails. In fact, I even ended up stepping on a protruding nail and had to get a tetanus shot as a result. Yeah, I ended up crying from the pain. It went right up through the sole of my shoe and was solidly lodged in my foot. Never the less, as a five or six year old, we loved all the debris and ruin. It was one huge playground to us.

The flower garden was more than just a small patch of overgrown weeds. It had, at one time, been a small working farm. On the property was a small craftsman-style bungalow, and behind it were rows and rows of straight cement paths that were used to plant roses and other flowers that were sold in the bungalow office. The flowers were still there. They were a colorful mess of tangled brambles, weeds, and odd flowers. It was obvious, even to us children, that the property was used to grow and sell flowers. In the decaying garage were stacks of clay earthenware flower pots (covered in green moss), bags of mulch (or something equivalent) and mechanical implements used in the tending of shrubs and flowers. We would climb in and out of the broken windows and even push ourselves up onto the roof. Occasionally we would jump down to the ground, and it hurt!

Pretty ballsy for a five year old, eh?

As a ruin, the structure was pretty typical. Thick rusty red water poured out of the faucets when you opened them up. The windows were all broken. The front door was open and the outer screen door was just a wooden frame with tattered collapsed rusty screening. The front lawn was overgrown and to us kids, the grass was as high as our waists. In and buried within the grass were bits of broken everything.

The second floor in the bungalow consisted of two rooms, and both were flooded with paper and unopened letters. That was it. It was a fully empty area filled with bags of unopened mail. As kids we would open the letters to see what was inside. They were just bills and boring letters. There just wasn’t anything exciting there.

The first floor consisted of a rear kitchen painted yellow with white trim, with windows over the sink that overlooked the rear gardens. The ancient white refrigerator was outside lying on its’ side. It was of the antique type with condenser coils on the top. It lay there like some kind of beached whale. The entry rooms were filled with piles of debris which seemed to be mostly display cabinets and a handful of chairs. The bathroom was outside. It was an outhouse with two toilet “holes” that were side by side. You know, for family or close friend use. On the floor were old ears of corn. Needless to say, we didn’t play in that.

The most interesting feature of this bungalow was its basement.

The Basement

Off from the kitchen was a nondescript door. It opened up to a staircase going down into darkness. Alongside the walls of the steps were old rusty cans of paint, dusty and cobweb covered mops, wires wrapped on nails, and boxes of rusty nails. The stairs plunged into pitch black darkness.

When we were able to brave the darkness and go downstairs, the stairs opened up to a landing in a large single room. It was a big open room made of cement cinderblocks. Light illuminated the dirty floor through low and dusty rectangular windows set at the sides of the cellar. There really wasn’t anything particularly interesting about the place, as it was filled with rubbish and rusty metal shelving containing empty wooden boxes, cans and empty glass bottles. There were piles of clutter. Even to us children, the clutter was dirty and uninteresting.

The clutter contained such things as cheap paintings of clowns (Why?), and oils of cats with enormous big sad eyes. There just wasn’t any toys of interest there. The closest thing was a speckled finish set of bongo drums, minus the drum covers. Even as a young boy, I didn’t want to touch the greasy filthy rubbish. It was a place where rats, mice and black widow spiders lived. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it.

Looking around, we soon discovered that set into the wall was a hidden door. The door was made out of matching cinderblocks. It rested on a rusty frame that pivoted outwards, and was stuck and frozen in place. When closed, it was obvious that you wouldn’t be able to see that there was a concealed door at all. However, now, we could easily see the door as it was stuck in the open position and held in place with a dirt floor. The door did not have an obvious handle. It looked like it could swing open and be bolted in place with a heavy rusted steel bar.

What was most interesting to us was what lay behind that hidden door.

The Gorilla Cage

For set in the exact middle of the room was a low cage. It too had a door that was frozen in the open position. The lower parts of the cage were all buried in the dirt of the floor. The bars were quite thick and were maybe ¾ inch thick. The top also had bars. It stood about five feet high, large animal size, and was maybe 5 feet by 5 feet square.

The door was set in the middle of one side. A rusty chain with a rusty padlock was affixed to the front door above an old keyhole lock.

We called it “the gorilla cage”.

It was empty. The floor of the basement had somehow flooded at some point in time and a layer of dirt covered everything.

We would play around this cage as children. We would take turns standing inside of the cage, and play “tag” inside the building. Like the other room, this room also had windows, but they covered with slats. The light would shine through the broken slats and fall flat upon to the dusty floor. It would give the dirty and dingy basement a medieval feel.

I know nothing about the cage, or why it was there. As such, the cage is just a dusty mystery that has been forgotten over the years.

Analysis

It wasn’t until decades later that I began to ponder the cage. Was it where a gorilla was kept? No, most certainly not. That was just a name coined by our childhood friends. As I grew older I began to wonder about that cage. What was it doing within a secret room? Indeed, why was there a secret room under a flower garden in the first place? What was its history?

Could if have been used to illegally import banned animals? No, not very likely. In the United States in the 1950’s and 1960’s there really wasn’t much in terms on legal restrictions on the importation of animals of any kind.

Perhaps the owners of the house had a pet lion, or tiger. Perhaps that was where they kept it. They would keep it down there and play with it from time to time. Maybe they actually had a pet gorilla, or maybe a monkey that they would take out with an organ grinder music box and have the monkey collect change from passers’ by. Perhaps they used the cage as some kind of safe. The bars were strong and thick. They were the bars used to hold convicts, not casual animals in a pet store. They obviously kept it well locked. After all, it had both a locked chain and a keyhole lock on it.

It has remained a mystery to me.

Today it is a long forgotten history. In fact, if it wasn’t for this post, this history would have ended when the building was torn down in 1964. As such, it is a personal curiosity. It is something that I experienced and offers yet another mystery of the past that will never be solved.

I tend to believe that the world is filled with such mysteries and secrets. Many times curious and strange events and actions are kept secret from others. The secrets remain with the observers, and when the die the histories behind those secrets die with them. This is but one small example of one such secret.

What do you think?

Some people have suggested that this might have been used for nefarious purposes in the past. Others suggest that maybe it was used to hold the most valuable roses and flowers, or the secrets to their growth, within that locked cage. Still others think that it was nothing of consequence, just a set of bars that just looked like a cage.

I don’t know what to think. Anyone have any ideas?

Take Aways

Many children can play in abandoned buildings and not die.
Someone, at some time, played bongo drums under a flower garden.
People used to think that paintings of clowns were attractive decorations.
Discoveries made as a child can develop into mysteries as we age.
There are things that we will never know about, and can only speculate on.
It is mysteries like this that fuel our imaginations.

RFH

How about a Request For Help? I tire of busybodies and statists who poke fun at the ideas and theories of others. They offer no constructive dialog. Rather they just make fun, ridicule, and then scurry under a rock.

I use this forum as a way to disseminate some of the things that I learned and experienced. I use it to tell stories so that others can learn and grow from my experiences. So I have to ask, what are you (the reader’s) experiences? Are they similar to this? Have you also found paintings of clowns in long forgotten basements? Have you ever played the bongos? Maybe you have recited poems while playing the bongos? What stories do you have? Don’t let them die when you pass on. Share them, we all are listening.

FAQ

Q: Can children play in abandoned buildings?
A: Yes, they can, but caution is strenuously advised. A parent certainly needs to teach the child how to behave and what to watch out for prior to any excursion.

Q: What is a cage doing in the basement?
A: That is the big mystery.

Q: Can the cage hold people?
A: Yes. Anyone locked in the cage would have a very difficult time getting out.

Q: Can people have a gorilla as a pet?
A: Not in the United States today. Pets and animals are regulated for personal use.

Q: Can you have a pet monkey?
A: Sure. You will need to check with the local ordinances in your city or town.

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