Do people still have rec-rooms any more? I haven’t been in one in years, blessedly. Or are rec-rooms one of those unlamented vestiges of the ‘50s and ‘60s like lava lamps and blonde furniture?
True rec-rooms (aka rumpus rooms, for whatever reason) were in basements and boasted claustrophobic low ceilings and wood paneling on the walls. I hate wood paneling because it was kind of the vinyl-siding of interior walls. Varnished 4×8 sheets designed to look like individual wood laths. They never did. There was something cheap looking about them, even though they could be very expensive. That’s something I know about.
You see I have a special heritage relationship with wood panels. You see, I spent all my university summers toiling in a factory that made – yep – wood panels. In fact, if you gave me the equipment, I bet I could still whip you out a smashing wood panel for your rec room.
Long, hot summers in which I could have been at the beach, drinking beer, losing my virginity again and again, were instead devoted to sweatily tending to a plywood press, tailing on a huge saw, tailing on a potentially lethal drum sander that could handle an entire panel at once and would periodically shoot one out with such impact it would smash into shards against the pile, and would have done the same to me had the operator not screamed “heads up!” before the fucking thing decapitated me. Ah, memories.
Memories of the two Scots machine operator who hated each other at a homicidal level – clan wars? Who knows? I liked Sandy the better of the two, despite the fact he was a pill head and dealer. And the old Paddy, an IRA wannabe (he maintained he was a veteran of the ‘troubles’, though I never believed him. Hated the English almost as pathologically as the two Scots hated each other. And the two Danny DeVito sized Italian brothers who would finish their shift at our mill, and then head off to the one down the road to put in another 8 hours.
And all of this for the sake of people’s tawdry rec room décor. Oh well, it paid well. And so it should have, it was damn hard work.
Back to rec rooms.
They always got rejected living-room furniture – rump-sprung and threadbare – and boasted floors that consisted of either aged and ugly carpeting laid right on the basement concrete, or sometimes tiles. In either case, the floors were always cold and had no give. In fact the rooms were often cold, despite the fact they (in this climate at least) were situated next to the furnace.
Often there was a handcrafted (and looked it) plywood bar stuck off to one side. “Don’t you kids be helping yourself to none of them beers, ha-ha-ha!” that often boasted travel souvenirs like ceramic Mexican bulls with huge testicles, and witty (not) semi-lewd samplers pinned up with references to breasts, alcohol consumption or toilet activities, none of them even as funny as an Adam Sandler movie, and that says a lot.
And a very lo-fi record player, and sometimes a recently rejected black-and-white TV since the family (plutocratic bastards) had moved up to color.
Rec rooms weren’t bad make-out venues since you could hear parents tramping down the basement stairs. “What are you kids doing? You’re awful quiet. I thought you were dancing.”
“Studying, Ma.”
“Oh well, don’t let me disturb you.”
You may think I am indicting rec rooms unfairly, but I have a special loathing for them, since the one at my parents’ house doubled as my bedroom and it always felt cold and damp.
But (as per my earlier reference) it was a good make-out spot, I shall confess.
“…losing my virginity again and again…”
How the heck does that work?
I think it’s called denial, Dinah. Worked for a few girls I knew.
We apparently had the same rec room back in the day, right down to the plywood bar and that cheap indoor-outdoor carpeting. But my bedroom was beside the rec room and not in it like yours. The parents put an oil heater in my bedroom so it was warm enough, but that rec room sure was chilly!
Well, of course we had to have the same rec room, since you’re my sister — right? So, you got a separate bedroom in the basement. I think I have a resentment about that. What was cold in ours, always, was the floor.
Our entire house is an enormous rec room. Weeee.
Oh, you people have so much fun, I’m envious.
No rec room when I was growing up….but when I moved to France most of the men had private bars set up in the outhouses well away from their wives’ territory.
There’s probably a virtue in that, for both husbands and wives.
There is worse than the fake wood panelling. There is fake wood paneling wallpaper. That was some scary shit right there… And it was in our basement.
Scary shit, indeed. Any wallpaper sucks, but meant-to-look-like-wood absolutely reeks. Had forgotten about such abominations.