With all of today's talk about school shootings and other heinous crimes I feel a little guilty about the topic of this week's Dear Hearts. Not guilty enough, however, to come up with another one at this late date.
Because the perpetrators of such unspeakable acts are (in my opinion anyway) human waste, I suppose one could make a tiny, if not readily apparent, connection between them and today's topic…..outhouses.
Yes, outhouses. Privies. Johnnies. Nessesariums. Water closets. Latrines. Comfort stations, and whatever else they used to call them including, forgive my crudeness, the Crapper.
I had not thought of outhouses for a long time but this past weekend my niece who is about to be wed mentioned to me that she would like me to help her tear down my grandfather's old outhouse which, surprisingly, is still standing….or rather leaning.
It seems that finding old privies these days is tantamount to discovering gold. I'm told that the "in" thing is to tear down the structures, then search for bottles and other relics that have somehow accumulated underneath them over the years.
Now when I first heard this the plan sort of made me sick to my stomach if you know what I mean. But then I realized that seventy years is ample time for whatever else that might have been left beneath the seat holes to have, shall we say, wasted away.
Somehow I doubt very much that there are any treasures awaiting us beneath the old shack that once serviced my grandpa's family of nine but if my niece is determined to go gold digging then I might as well grab me a shovel, too.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) the building and care of outhouses these days is a "lost art." Ask anyone under the age of 30 and chances are they've never heard of one, much less used one. I myself used the privy in question many, many times.
Up until the time of the Civil War every American household had at least one "pit privy," then they began to slowly disappear with the advent of indoor plumbing. Around the 1930s they were still plentiful and during the Great Depression the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built two million outhouses.
There are a lot of jokes about the good old days and the long treks to the outhouse in the dark and in the cold, of corncobs, and not a few family tales of mishaps inside one. The stories of overturned privies are legion. I've heard my share of them over the years and some are not pretty.
My grandpa's johnny was a threeholer but I'm told others in the county who were more well-to-do had as many as four or five holes. Seems to me a one-holer would have been the most sought after since it afforded the user more privacy but such was not the case when times were hard.
"There were times when me, my brother, and my sister, all of us would be in the outhouse at the same time," said my neighbor. "We never thought a thing about it," he said laughing. "We just took turns taking the coffee can, filling it up with lime, and pouring it over, well, inside the holes when we were done."
Landscaping outside the family outhouse was very important. Fig trees were recommended because they benefited from the constant replenishing of the soil. Cover vines such as trumpet and morning glory were advised for color and screening; wisteria and honeysuckle for fragrance.
The door was of prime importance. It must always swing in, to give the user full control over entrance and exit. Of course, some innovative thinkers had other ideas.
My neighbor said his daddy built his outhouse directly behind an oak tree to which he affixed a panel of boards so he could "go" with the door open. Creativity abounded with the erection of the family privy since it was not only a place to "go" but it was a place to, if you were lucky, be alone, to contemplate the state of the world, to listen to the birds, to look at the pictures in the Sears & Roebuck catalog.
There's the story of the lady who wrote to Sears & Roebuck wanting to order some toilet paper. A letter was sent back to her asking for the page and item number from the book. Her swift reply was, "If I'd had the catalog, I wouldn't have needed to order the toilet paper."
My own memories of outhouse use are mixed, some good and some not so good. I do remember that my paternal grandfather was kind enough to build his outhouse right next to the peanut patch so every time I "went" I was allowed to pick peanuts on the way back to the house.
On the down side, my maternal grandfather's privy had splinters and when I was about seven I once fell in the hole. (Hence, my many years of counseling.)
Ah, those were the days. I wouldn't doubt that there are still a few outhouses in use today, as evidenced by the following story. A lady near Lafayette, Georgia, the north Georgia town in which my motherin law was raised, lives alone at the foot of Lookout Mountain. It seems that last year her grown children offered to build her a state-of-the-art indoor bathroom.
"I just don't know," she said. "Seems to me business of a private nature just ought not be done inside the house."
Come to think of it, bless her heart, it probably shouldn't be talked about in the local paper either. Well, I've gotta go. (Sorry, I just couldn't resist it.)
