Winchester Cathedral

"Please be careful of the window in the floor," announced our tour guide, Wayne, as Kay and I ascended yet another staircase to yet another level of the maze-like mansion built by Sarah Winchester, widow of the rifle magnate. She began construction on her Victorian estate in 1884, and never completed it, because the spirits told her continuous construction was the only way to atone for the deaths of all those killed by Winchesters.

The guns, that is, not the people.

They call it the Winchester Mystery House, a device contrived to milk the tourist trade in San Jose, particularly during the Halloween season, but there's no mystery about it, despite our tour guide Wayne's attempts to make the late Mrs. Winchester sound like a raving lunatic.

"There are doors that open into walls, stairways that lead to ceilings, doors that open out from the second floor into nowhere, a front door that was never used, and a staircase that you had to go up to go up to go down, then down to go up to go down," says Wayne, and then he laughs like Andy Griffith's character, Lonesome Rhodes, in "A Face In The Crowd."

"The design of this staircase makes perfect sense to me," opines Kay, as we ascend the Escher-like steps with two inch risers. "Imagine the maids running up and down all day, carrying whatever it was they were carrying in addition to fifty pounds of dress."

The long and gradual incline of the stairway, built almost like a ramp, was a brilliant invention, in our view. Any woman who's ever worn a wedding gown would be foolish not to agree.

"The $12,000 Tiffany stained glass window to your left provides a lovely view of the elevator shaft," Wayne is saying.

We take a closer look and find that, indeed it does.

"Maintenance?" I offer.

"You got me," says Kay.

I'm acting the tourist in my new town, because my best friend is visiting for two weeks, and it's not acting at all, really, since I've only been here just over a month myself. They say 80% of New Yorkers have never been up the Empire State Building, and I can believe that. I spent more than half of my life living within view of the CN Tower, and was only up it twice, both times when relatives were visiting from Germany.

Wayne is telling us how many thousands of square feet of closet space the house comprises. The women in the tour group, Kay and I included, let out a collective sigh.

So what if Mrs. Winchester communed with the spirits, and had a seance room? You wanna tell me Tim Berners-Lee's inspiration for the World Wide Web was any less bizarre?

The tour is at an end, Kay and I are in the garden. We wander in and out of the outbuildings. We don't speak, but I know she's noticing the same things that I'm noticing. The fruit trees. The barns. The fruit processing and winemaking equipment. We grew up around buildings like this.

And in our highschool, we had a rifle range. It was in the basement of the old wing, built in the last turn of the century, when preparing young men for the military was a part of the function of public education. In the late 1970s, when we attended Beamsville District Secondary School, the rifle club was one of the cooler clubs to belong to. For the non-athletic types, like Kay and me.

I won the trophy for Girls Best Shot in grade twelve.

"Let's go see the guns," suggests Kay.

"Of course."

When they get home, Postmodern Sass and Kay watch a movie.