Under the quaint, whitewashed New England church sanctuary, there's the ever present staple of Yankee church life:

the church basement. 

Site of Sunday school classes taught by generations of grey-haired grandmothers and saintly spinster aunts;

VBS craft lessons when the kids needed a break from running relay races in the New England July heat,

Christmas parties, 

Baby showers, 

Halloween parties (or Halloween alternatives or harvest parties, depending on the pastor that particular October)

And plenty of bland potato salad and ham sandwiches after every funeral held upstairs in the last century.

This cellar has been the home of countless food pantries,

youth group lock-ins (when nobody sleeps, teenaged boys practice their flirting on giggly girls, and occaisionally they learned something about Jesus),

cobwebs, dust bunnies, 

and potluck lunches.

There's been those brief attempts at trying something different, with varying degrees of success and impact:

 local AA meetings,

a puppet ministry for the kids,

English classes for the few immigrants who were brave enough to move to a small New England town,

and union meetings (when the pastor at the time was a Democrat.)

This ever dusty, ever chilly space supported by lolli-columns has had an ongoing need of fresh paint since the 70's, and the toilet in the bathroom runs nonstop unless you jiggle the handle five times when you flush.

  But there have been few more important contributors to church life in this little corner of creation than the New England church basement.