I did everything right. This thing is broken. This is the secind time.
I shall try again. Here’s the body of my question. Again;
First off, I did check snopes. Nada.
My dad (long dead now), who hailed from Nebraska, called rolls of toilet tissue “cobs”. So did a lot of his contemporaries. He told me that in the ‘old days’, back when rocks was dirt, people used corn cobs as we use toilet tissue.
I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now.
But. I’ve been wrong once or twice.
Anyone else ever heard this? And could there be any truth in it?
I know people used grass and such, but cobs? Ouch!
BTW; I actually call it toilet paper, but I wanted to be classy here. Serious Replies Only, Please.
Peace,
mangeorge
Well, here’s the poop from my dad and mom about bathrooms and hygiene in the 1920’-1940’s in the “country.” Just finished a call with them.
My dad grew up on a farm in the 1930’s in and around Danville, VA. They absolutely had an outhouse where they hung a catalogue, both Sears and Montgomery Wards, and they also had a bucket of dried corn cobs. My mom, who grew up in the city remembers visiting relatives in the “country” in the 1930’s and 40’s who had catalogues and corn cobs in the outhouse. MY mom allows as how she would use the catalogue pages, but never a cob.
“The material of choice among colonial America was corn cobs.”
“In the late 19th century, the Sears catalog became popular in rural America. People simply hung it up on a nail and had a free supply of 100’s of pages of absorbent, uncoated paper. Corn cobs were still holding as a strong second place contender, however. Use of the Sears catalog declined in the 1930’s due to the fact that they started printing on glossy, clay-coated paper. Many people complained to Sears about this glossy paper (Can you imagine writing a letter to Sears: Dear Sir, I want to register a complaint about your new glossy catalog paper. It is no longer soft and absorbent…).
The first actual paper produced for wiping was in England in 1880. They were individual squares sold in boxes, not rolls. This paper was very coarse - the type the British prefer today. Americans like the soft, fluffy type, which was introduced in 1907.
My dad, who grew up in a time when outhouses were common, used the phrase “rough as a cob”. I asked him where the expression came from, and he explained that corn cobs used to be used as bum wipe.
From time to time I think of user names I could have chosen. “Rufus A. Cobb” was one of them.
mangeorge you should know by now this site has the good shit on everything! No way will you get wiped out here, although some of the responses might be a tad rough on the delicate parts.
In this thread, however, just don’t put it in your pipe and smoke it.
Here in Mexico, my wifes Uncle Luis said about the subject “the cob actually has a triple function so to speak…limpia, pena y quita comezon” which loosely translated means that it “cleans, combs and gets rid of the itch!”
Just so you know, some varieties of corn have a dark reddish cob while others have more of a whitish colored cob. When I was but a wee child I was told by my beloved grandfather that the proper outhouse technique required “two reds and a white”. The red cobs (apparently more readily available, at least in that locale) were used for bulk removal, and the white was used to determine if the job was sufficiently done. Surely, my grandfather wouldn’t have lied to a small impressionable child about such a thing!
I feel so enlightened. I was about to perform a personal experiment, then I realized the limitations of my (houses) plumbing.
We had an outhouse when I was very young. Our’s had a real toilet seat but the neighbor only had a hole. We were very proud.
We used catalogs and store-bought toilet paper, depending on the financial situation. The catalog paper was way too glossy. You had to kind of wrinkle it up. But we never did use cobs. We threw them to the chickens to peck at, then put what ever was left in the garden.
Bonus question;
Are you a folder, or a wadder?
Peace,
mangeorge
I think the “two reds and a white” is an old joke. When I was a boy in the 50’s, my parents had a bathroom joke consisting of two red corn cobs and one white - in a box with a cellophane cover and a notice that said “In case of emergency, break glass.” It went on to give instructions something like “Use red cob first. Then use white cob to see if second red cob needed.”
Racy, indeed, fstrath.
I grew up in the 50’s myself (b. 1945), and I remember people being more uptight about the “nasty bits” than about bodily functions.
How old were you before you heard the word sex? Hey! A newbie! Welcome to the SDMB
Peace,
mangeorge
Oooh, memories. When I was a kid we used to visit relatives in northern Wisconsin who still had an outhouse - they had electricity and running (well) water, but lived too far out of town for a sewage hookup and had elected not to get a septic tank. Anyway. Hanging on the outhouse wall was a plaque, on which was mounted a corncob with an electrical cord with plug sticking out from one end. The plaque said something like “Progress Is An Electric Corncob”.
At that time I was a city girl who was blissfully unaware of the connection between outhouses and corncobs. I didn’t mind the outhouse at all, but that electric corncob was damn scary :eek:
