Second Action 1 9.0 to hit the census

[bluechip]

Here's the basement in question.

 

That picture sure makes me believe that the famous "cedar smell" derives far far more from the freshly cut home made cedar boxes Chuck stored the comics in than from the basement.

 

I am not a Mile High expert but I'd heard long ago that the books were all over the basement, and stacked on the floor and even the landing of the stairs, along with magazines that had been cut up.

 

Without knowing how big that room is (looks like more of a storage room than a closet, but it could have been intended for storage of winter clothing etc, and it could easily be huge. I have seen big rooms in basements lined with cedar because it's good for storing all kinds of things and good for keeping away bugs, so it makes sense to have it in a basement if you are storing things there

 

As for the smell coming from Chuck's storage, it seems unlikely that could have affected all of the books or even most of them to the degree it did in such a short time.

 

For a while I kept some of my comics in a cedar chest, tucked under sweaters, to "disguise" them from nosy visitors or siblings. Some were in that chest for years but I never noticed any cedar smell from those books. Only many years later did I even hear about the distinctive smell of Mile High books, when a collector with knowledge of them told me that one of the books I had was from that collection. (it was not one of the books I'd kept with the sweaters but a book I'd acquired some time later)

 

Even then he didn't say what it was about the smell that let him know. I got the sense that the specific identity of the smell was almost considered a trade secret, at the time.

 

[sfcityduck]

There is a huge difference between the smell put out by a cedar plank that has been sitting around for a decade or so (minimal if any), which would have been the case I think with the Church house, and freshly cut cedar such as comprised Chuck's homemade storage boxes. There is no doubt the smell from Chuck's storage would have been much much more robust.

[Timely]

One thing I can say for certain, after smelling about 2500 Mile High copies over the years, there are 2 clearly distinctive smells between the early 1940's comics and books that came later in the collection. It is my belief that the 1930's to mid 1940's books were in the closet and the rest were in the basement, hence the 2 different smells. I'd guess the closet shelves had cedar shelving, the basement floor did not.