Our Attic Stairs
By Roy Hess Sr.
It was just a small ad selling a shoulder mount of an eight-point buck in the local paper. But reading it unearthed memories of an event that terrorized my childhood for a short period.
After my older siblings had married and moved, it left just me and my youngest sister Frances, seven years my senior, at home.
With freed-up sleeping space “Tootie” and I were accorded our own bedrooms; however, our bathroom had a stairway to the attic that was small and inconvenient. So Dad had a carpenter take about three feet off my large room for a normal staircase. That also created a large under stairway closet for the bedroom.
Our attic was not finished and through three generations, it was ground zero for all the cast-off stuff that someone didn’t want, but didn’t want it thrown away either. Before my time, the family had moved from McKees Rocks to Vanderbilt, then to Dawson. Excess stuff from each move accumulated in the attic. The new stairwell provided this 7-year-old a path to unimaginable new explorations. Books, cabinets, my brother’s chemistry set, old records, a box of rolls for the player piano, a crank-wound victrola, countless new-to-me discoveries.
Nothing in the attic was finished as a room. Dad had nailed some floorboards down the middle, but stepping off the floor joists meant crashing through a bedroom ceiling below. Some random pieces of plywood allowed for more storage. Boxes of old magazines spurred my
inquisitive nature.
But no adventure compared to the day I opened the attic door and headed up the stairs. Looking up, I was confronted by the seemingly glowing eyes of an eight-point buck that had been mounted on the wall overlooking the steps. The confrontation stopped me in my tracks. I had never seen the mount before, nor did I know who placed it at the head of the stairs. My brother Ken was the hunter in the family. He also had a propensity to play practical jokes – but this was no joke. I was scared out of my wits.
As I tentatively eased up the stairs and past the deer, the buck’s huge eyes followed me. It seemed that anywhere I was in the attic bulging eyes were on me. I don’t believe I was ever comfortable playing in the attic with the monstrous deer invading my privacy.
Everyone in our house seemed to be committed to keeping the buck’s history from me. It may have been part of an influx of various items from my paternal grandfather’s apartment in Ohio. He took ill and had to move out of his apartment. Dad went to Ohio and brought Grandpa and a lot of his belongings with him.
I never really got comfortable with the guardian deer head. While my initial fear ebbed, I never really looked at the buck, because I knew those huge piercing eyes would be staring back. My sister, Tootie compounded my fear by whispering, “I wouldn’t go up those stairs on a bet.”
Then one day, I opened the attic door and noticed the buck was gone. And just as no one admitted to placing it there, no one seemed to know when or how it left.
Had it really been there? Was it an apparition?
A lot of things appeared and disappeared in the attic over the years. I was just a kid in a grown up world.
The attic provided a lot of interesting things; plus a staring buck that scared the bejabbers out of me.
Roy Hess Sr. is a retired teacher and businessman from Dawson.