An Ode to an Outhouse
Good day dear readers! Welcome back for another exciting farm adventure!
The lonely outhouse. Long maligned for being a cold, miserable place to have to do your business. Frosted seats in winter, splinters in your bum, odiferous, stifling in the heat, critters flying and crawling around your head.
Not a pretty picture, is it?
With the advent of indoor plumbing, most outhouses disappeared from the landscape of the farm, ranch, or town houses. I would say with great glee upon the part of the men, women, and children who were given no other option but to take your business outside.
My introduction to an outhouse came when I was a child. My grandparents had a piece of land in Vermont where they spent many vacations on. This is before they relocated there permanently when my Papa Ed retired from working at the phone company.
I was lucky enough to get to spend many weeks at that cabin in the woods. I don’t recall the first cabin they had; it burned down before I was able to remember it. That was thanks to several locals who decided to ransack it and burn it down on them. That was the story I was told.
Next to the cabin was a combination tool shed and outhouse. Not a traditional hole in the ground kind of potty, but a trash can, lined with a garbage bag, and a toilet seat you sat your tushy upon. There was a roll of toilet paper in an old coffee can for your convenience. As a small child I had to be lifted up there as my bitty legs were just not long enough.
Wow, that was a long time ago.
When Rob and I were looking at this house before we bought it, one of the selling points, actually, was that it still had an operable outhouse. It was in sorta sad shape, but it worked.
The floor was sagging, as was the roof, but the seat was still in great shape considering its age. We were pretty sure that it was the original to the house, so that makes it over 112 years old. This was confirmed by a gentleman who grew up on this place and carved his initials into the seat. And deep!!! Very deep and lined with concrete. This sucker was built to withstand the passage of turds and time.
One of the nice advantages of this particular potty is that it is a two seater! Now that was moving up in the world!! You can bring a friend with you and chat while your sitting!
Rob replaced the roof and floor on it for us. Even sheeted the roof with tin to keep it from rotting away again. I scrubbed the insides, stocked it with paper and just for haha’s a magazine if you really wanted to go old school. Sorry, no Sears and Robuck’s catalog available!
The outhouse became invaluable to us when we had to remodel the inside version. We used the camper for the shower, but to save on water and having to dump the tank, we just ventured outside to drop a dime. Yup, it was a lifesaver!!
I still clean it out when we are doing a shearing event here. It sure helps with the people overflow considering we only have a 1 bathroom house. I have not seen two people in it at the same time though.
The view from the seat! Changes with the seasons.
The next time you sit to do your daily constitutional, give a thought to its predecessor, the lowly outhouse! And count yourself lucky you're not freezing you butt when it’s 20 degrees!
Blessed Be!
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Worst part of braving the outhouse at my uncle's farm was trying to avoid the farm dog. As a child I was terrified of dogs and almost as terrified of the outhouse. And my mother did not indulge my fears😞 Fortunately when my own family moved to a farm in 1962 it had indoor plumbing.
The outside dunny! Yours looks quite pretty. We had those too - my mum talked of the one at her house when she was a kid. Down the back by a lilac. It had two half doors. So you either opened the top one (for air) and waved to anyone going by or opened the bottom one and waved your feet!