Outhouses

Some of you may already know this, because I am sure that I mentioned it in a story or blog on EP, but I grew up using an outhouse.

All this talk about time and age tends to bring these things back and per the title of this blog, I have a compulsion to share.

To this day, my parents have and maintain a very nice outhouse.  Yes, they have indoor plumbing, and they had it early on when I was growing up, but we only had the one bathroom in the house and in the early mornings it was generally occupied and that left either a tree or the outhouse to do your business in.  I can remember waking up on a cold, snowy winter morning and running out to the outhouse in only a pair of winter boots and my skivvies.  You took care of business quickly.  It was cold.  There was (and is) a small coal stove out in the outhouse that I do not remember ever being lit, but there it is.  The outhouse at home was actually quite plush by outhouse standards.  Maple flooring, a smooth two holed maple seat with maple lids.  Very nice tongue and groove maple paneling and two small windows that opened.  It was built, I would guess, somewhere around the turn of the century and was far removed from the caricature outhouse with the moon in the door.  Although there was a stack of JC Penney catalogs next to the seat in case the toilet paper ran out.

Our outhouse was clean.  There was a bucket of quick lime that was used liberally and it was swept out, wiped out and generally sanitized probably more often than most indoor toilets.  The worst job was the yearly "fall cleanout."  A removable panel on the back of the outhouse was unscrewed and a shovel and wheelbarrow was employed to "lower the pile."  The fact that we had an indoor toilet diminished the amount that had to be removed, but it was still done yearly.

In addition to the outhouse at home, the service garage that I worked in (and mentioned in my own blog) had no plumbing other than a hose bib for filling radiators and washing cars.  There were two outhouses.  One on each side of a small storage building in back of the garage.  Men's and Women's.  Being as progressive and inclusive and politically correct as we were brought up to be, a lack of use by the general public made it efficient to lock the door on the "Men's" outhouse and turn the "Women's" outhouse into a unisex or "gender neutral" outhouse.  One less place to clean.

Once again, these outhouses (later reduced to one) were clean.  They were cleaned daily, by me!  I had to use them!  They were limed as needed and swept out and had been built in such a way that you could easily hose them out once a week in the summer.  The outhouse at the service garage was not as plush as the one at home, but it was just as clean and the lime kept odor down even on the hottest days.

One thing is true about outhouses, and it was certainly true for all of ours, they attract bugs.  Even with a bit of insecticide, they still attracted spiders and the like and bugs attract snakes and snakes and bugs tend to attract skunks.  A regular point of inspection was to insure that a skunk had not dug its way into the outhouse in order to find a tasty treat or a snake.  Sitting down over a skunk would not be a pleasant experience.

Outhouses were a fact of life for me and my family growing up and hence, not out of the ordinary or even anything you really thought about.  I own the service garage that I grew up in and there is still no plumbing there.  The outhouse is still clean.  It was always funny to me when someone would come into the garage looking to use the restroom and I would point them out back.  It was a 50/50 chance that they would actually use it no matter how clean it was. Eventually, I got to the point where, when asked, I would simply say, "there is no plumbing here."  Once again it was a 50/50 chance whether the person asking would believe you.

Having a "public" outhouse led to numerous (I think) funny stories. 

For a while, we began having a problem with someone stealing the roll of toilet paper as well as the spare roll from the outhouse.  Nothing more frustrating than going out to the outhouse to take care of business and having no TP.  We got to the point where we would take a roll out with us and finally got to the point where, if someone wanted to use the outhouse we would hand them a roll, much like you would get the key at a more modern service station.  My dad, who has a good, but dry sense of humor, one summer filled a bucket with dry corn cobs and set it on the seat with a little sign that said, "help yourself."

As I noted, some people would use the outhouse and some would turn up their nose and go somewhere else.  Behind the garage, we had a very large lawn area with large spreading beach trees and, being a tourist area, it was not uncommon for people to stop on their bicycles and have lunch or relax under the trees for a while.  I remember one such time, a woman in a group who were sitting under the trees got up and went to the door of the outhouse and peeked in.  She went in and closed the door.  I was working at the work bench in the back of the garage and had a clear view of the back yard and the outhouse through the windows.  Suddenly, I heard the most blood curdling scream you can imagine and the door of the outhouse came flying open and out she came with her pants around her ankles, falling to her knees and crawling away yelling "RATTLE SNAKE."  You will remember that I told you that the bugs inherent in any outhouse attracted snakes and such.  This was one of those times.  a 3 foot long Pine (or Fox) snake had crawled into the hole, the bottom of which was a good 6 feet from the hole in the seat.  If you are familiar with a fox snake, they look quite similar to a rattle snake and actually shake their tail (no rattle) when disturbed.  One of nature's mimics you might say, but they are actually quite shy and harmless.  I had seen him before on my own trips to the outhouse.  Can you imagine this poor woman carefully sitting down to do her business and looking down the hole between her legs to see an even more frightened snake?  I just about had to use the outhouse myself I was laughing so hard.

Numerous times we would have salesmen who would stop at the garage who would open their van and want to sell us spark plugs or oil filters or other shop supplies and invariably every summer there was at least one janitorial supply salesman that would stop to sell us cleaning supplies for the restroom.  They always looked dumbfounded when I asked if they carried deodorizing shovels.

 One thing I always wanted to do in our "Public Gender Neutral" outhouse was to wire a PA speaker under the seat.  I had visions of someone going into the outhouse to do their business and just at the right time I planned to say over the PA, "Would you mind moving over to the other hole?  I am trying to paint down here and you are blocking the light!"  That would have been hilarious, but alas, I never got around to it.

Outhouses have been made "illegal" around here now and unless you have one that is grandfathered, there is no chance of installing one.  I am not sure why anyone would want to, but since I still have mine, I maintain it, as do my folks, so as not to lose it.  They really don't need theirs any more since it is just the two of them, but I have no other alternative at the garage. There is a lock on the door now, because it is no longer public, but yes, the bucket of corn cobs is still there.