I worked for a gentleman in general contracting that lived in a house like
that on Long Island, near Port Jefferson I remember or Stony Brook, NY. The
barn had been converted into a house and in an extension, with a flagstone
floor, was a covered a cistern, on the way to the small greenhouse attached
to the now kitchen. Very convenient. Also on Long Island, in Bellport, I
have seen other remains of a cistern where the corner of a barn had been, on
the property of  G. Washington, a Brazillian marketer of the first sucessful
instant coffee, though it would be outside, I think though excavating a
small pit with 4th graders as an exercise in an alternative school. Mr.
Washington had an aviary and a seen on the docks with a monkey on his back.

I worked on a "controversial" pit in Skagway, Alaska, shortly after leaving
the general contractor for awhile. This small square pit had become a small
ceespit in the back of the house where the State of Alaska anthem was
composed. The nearby Captain Moore cabin had been moved, Skagway's first
settler of repute, either by water or people from it's known (?) location.
It was wooden lined and fairly shallow, and I thought it might have been in
the middle of the cabin floor or other part of the log cabin there, wall
papered with scientific journals, newspapers, etc., "skagway" interpreted as
eith "home of the north wind" or "home of the cruel wind" and indeed, at
certain times of the day wind will blow up through a sifting screen.

Interesting in an earlier "silent movie" made in Russia, predating Chaplin's
comic "yardstick" "The Goldrush" this pit in the cabin figures much in the
plot of the movie. I serves as an escape out of the cabin as a tunnel into
the side of the nearby river, the cabin a few meteres above it. There is
"cabin fever" tragedy and when the floods come the survivors perched on the
roof. I can't rememebr if the cabin floats away, its been 30 years since I
saw the almost "ethnographic" film. Anyone else seen it? The pit becomes the
escape from the crazed occupant, and the survivors out through it, survive.
The pit in Skagway was dug into gravel and lined on its sides with wood
about < meter square. The house occupants claim its always been a cesspit.

George Myers


----- Original Message -----
From: "Anita Cohen-Williams" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2003 7:42 PM
Subject: Re: Sub-Floor Pits/Root Cellars


> At a borrowed lab in Leon, Mexico, the cistern was under a trapdoor in the
> floor. Every time I needed water to wash artifacts, I had to open the
door,
> and lean down with a bucket, hoping that I would not fall in.
>
>
>
> Anita Cohen-Williams
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