Outhouses

[dhermann1]

I just noticed the mention of outhouses in the Observation Bar, and it brought back memories. My grandparents had a little farm in Northampton County PA that they bought during the Depression that was their summer home. It didn't get indoor plumbing till 1959. I remember vividly using the old outhouse, and having to use a hand pump in the kitchen for water. Anybody else out there have experience with good old fashioned outdoor plumbing?

 

[kpreed]

My wife grew-up in New Hampshire and a 'two holler' outhouse, when someone would get-up from the other hole, the wood would pinch your seat.

 

[Haversack]

Yep. I've dug a new pit and built a wheel chair accessable outhouse to cover it for a friend's ranch in central B.C. Of course I can't take complete credit for it. I had read Chic Sale's classic bit of vaudeville humour, "The Specialist". If you don't know it, find it and read it. Besides being an excellent example of practical architechtural design thinking, it made Chic Sale's name synonemous with outhouses.

Haversack.

 

[Havana]

Here in the rural South many homes didn't have indoor toilets even after getting running water in the 40's and 50's. I think it was because toilets were expensive and also you had to find a place to put it. You either had to convert an existing room (farmers rarely had rooms to spare) or add on a room which just compounded the expense. I guess people were just willing to make due. I was born in 1972 and remember vividly visiting older people in my lifetime who still relied on functioning outhouses.

 

[Michaelson]

Been there, done that, no good memories to report.

Regards! Michaelson

 

[Big Man]

My granddad installed indoor plumbing sometime in the early 1920's. He built the new bathroom on the back porch.

Growing up in the 1960's, I remember a number of the houses in the area still only had an outhouse. The last functioning outhouse I remember (other than at hunting cabins or the like) disappeared about 1970. It was at a house down by the railroad, and was on the side of a small creek. I sure was glad I din not live down stream on that creek!

 

[LizzieMaine]

There are plenty of farms around here that still have outhouses -- some friends of mine raise sheep and goats on a farm about half an hour's drive from here, and there's no chance they'll ever have indoor plumbing. A one-holer next to the chicken house, and that's all they've got. (They use chamberpots in the winter, though.)

 

[Big Man]

... (They use chamberpots in the winter, though.)

Ah, the old "pee-pot". An old pot or coffee can under every bed is still a memory from my grandmother's house. With the bathroom on the back porch, it was much more convenient (especially on a cold winter night) to have a can handy. Of course I had an upstairs room with no screen on the windows (draw your own conclusions from that statement).

 

[Paratrooper]

Well just this March at an reencament unit training event we used the outhouse that is still "active" on one of our menbers home. It was rather nice. Beats digging a hole.

 

[Miss 1929]

Trapped by a bear

in an outhouse in Yellowstone Park... bad memory...

 

[dhermann1]

Gardez l'eau!

Chamber pots! Another fun topic! (BTW, "Gardez l'eau", pronounced "Gardy loo!" (which is why the bathroom is called the LOO in England), is what you'd say right before tossing your chamber pot's contents out the window, back a few centuries. One of many reasons to be glad we live today and not then.)
When I spent the summers of 1951 and 52 with my grandmother and her two older sisters in the old family cottage in Chautauqua, they still had those dear old things under their beds, even tho they had a perfectly good bathroom right across the hall. That is one ancient amenity I confess to being glad never to have used. Personally, I DO believe the fable of the woman who, not knowing what it was, served her family a nice hot "tureen" of soup in one. I'll bet it's happened more than once.