Privys are common on hiking trails. Wasps and dirt daubers love to build nests in privys.
Lots of fun when I can see them buzzing in and out of the board with the hole. Then I have to decide if it’s a harmless dirt dauber or a mean wasp.
We had that problem at Scout Camp. Fairly large cenderblock building with a dozen holes. Wasps and dirt daubers everywhere.
A few of my friends here in southern Ohio have fishing cabins that have outhouses. I have never seen a primary residence that had one.
KlondikeGeoff, I’m very happy to see that you’re still with us!
I only know and experienced Privies from camps. We had outdoor latrines at my old Boy Scout Camp (which has recently closed, and the buildings have been getting bulldozed over the past couple of years – including the latrines). We took turns cleaning it out during the time we were there, liberally sloshing Lysol around in an effort to keep the smell down. One of my friends dropped his (lit) Boy Scout flashlight down the hole one night, and it continued to blaze away for several days in the muck. The walls were liberally covered in Boy Scout Grafitti.
Many years later, my daughter got to experience outdoor privies at her Girl Scout camp – only some of the camps actually had flush toilets. Kids these days.
Grandparents had one in the 1960s, where we vacationed every summer.
They had indoor plumbing and a proper bathroom, I have no idea why both were used pretty much equally.
But once I clued into the fact that grandpa’s nudist magazines were stored in the outhouse, that became my facility of choice.
mmm
Not at home, but a vacation cottage “up north” in Michigan had an outhouse until I was in High School.
Also have lots of experience with campground outhouses, and dig-your-own experiences.
I do recall our home having an outdoor pump when I was a very small child, but I’m certain we also had indoor plumbing. The outdoor pump was just a relic that had not been removed.
Trash like old collectible bottles got thrown into the holes they are a prime hunting ground for some people. For an archaeologist a 200+ year old pit can be a gold mine.
The material breaks down and/or dries out after a few years and it’s not at all disgusting to dig thru.
Note that esp. in a farm type situation when a hole gets filled up rather than clean it out it is usually easier to dig a new hole and move the outhouse. A farmstead could have dozens of old holes to dig through. You use a stiff probe rod to test for softer than usual soil to find them.
I had a friend when I lived in Alaska that had only an outhouse at his cabin in the woods. It wasn’t so much an outhouse as a lean-to with only two walls at 90 degrees and a roof. You look out a beautiful Alaska vista while you did your bidness. It had a styrofoam seat that wasn’t cold, even on below zero days.
Variously when I was very young. I hated them. Spider-infested, cold, smelly, uncomfortable. Ugh.
We had a beach house (we call it a ‘crib’), though it was more of a rundown shack at the time, and it had one. We’ve since rebuilt on the property and it’s long gone.
If you’ve ever taken the main route up Rainier, you probably got to experience the “solar toilets” at Camp Muir. I think that means when the sun comes out, the barrels of sewage warm up and become an atrocious smelling beast. The worst smelling outhouses I have ever had the displeasure of using. And I’ve used a lot of outhouses.
Conversely, the composting toilets in the Grand Canyon were refreshing.
I read one of Tom Bodett’s Alaska books many years ago. He mentioned a charming solution to the cold seat problem. He hung his toilet seat on his stove-pipe, so it was toasty warm whenever it was needed.
In 1983, my wife (not married to me at the time) lived in a house in rural CT while she and her husband built their own house on another spot on their four-acre lot. The house had electricity and running water (from a well), but it also had an outhouse instead of a septic tank. She was pregnant at the time and recalls it being, er…uncomfortable. They lived in that house for almost a year, then tore it down when they moved into their new house.
This story surprised me a bit because the house they built had only 1-1/2 bathrooms (a full one upstairs for three bedrooms and a half bath downstairs off the laundry room). She admitted that it was a huge mistake and that they should have picked a design with a lot more toilets, if only because of the year they spent with a single-holer.
At the Fly’s Eye Cosmic Ray Observatory in Dugway Utah, which is a LONG way from any water or sewer system (though they’ve got electricity) they came up with an interesting toilet system. It’s indoors, and they don’t store the waste. Instead. you put what amounts to wax paper down inside the metal bowl, and when you’re finished, they bake it out and scatter the ashes. The students using it termed it “The Destroylet” They appreciate if you don’t pee in it, because it takes longer to process that way.
I haven’t been around when it was cycling, but I imagine it must smell the way our local animal-testing lab does when they clean out the cages and torch the remains.
https://inspectapedia.com/septic/Incinerating_Toilet_Destroilet.php
https://inspectapedia.com/septic/Incinerating_Toilet_Guide.php
I keep thinking of the various catalogs* I have seen since the 1980s, which consist of glossy coated paper that seemingly would be non-absorbent and just smear “stuff” around; in effect being useless compared with the, say, rural Indian villager method of “left hand + water”.
*Haven’t seen the Montgomery Ward catalog since the 1970s when I was a kid (and no, we had toilet paper so it wasn’t for that reason), but I definitely remember eagerly awaiting the Christmas catalog for all the cool (for the era) toys and games it showcased.
Thanks, Crotalus. I am happy still to be here too, at age 90.
I am astonished at how many responses the simple question I posted produced.
And there I was, thinking at my age very few people would remember privies. Not something one would normally be nostalgic about.
You must be nearing 91 by now, no? That’ll make you the age my great great granduncle was when I visited him at his house with no plumbing, just an outhouse. His dad (my g x 3 grandfather) was a civil war veteran who fought for the union.
I’m happy you’re still amongst us too!
I’ve seen pictures of two story outhouses. One was a relic from a university. The upper part was labeled “faculty” and the lower part “students”
Another was attached to a large house built back in the day by a wealthy man who had twelve kids. It was painted and shingled like the house, and being as it was attached the family didn’t need to use thunder mugs as much.
Ok, anyone here remember using thunder mugs, gazunda jugs, potties, chamber chaps and the like?
I admit, I do lack firsthand experience with that equipment.
There was a “Dirty Jobs” episode where Mike Rowe was on a military submarine, and their “head” was like that. I should add that this crew was men-only, so they wouldn’t have had to deal with menstrual issues.
When we were kids at my Grans we used a chamber pot in the night. It was a measure of being not ‘little’ any more when you were brave enough to go outside and across the yard in the dark to do you business. The outhouse was on the edge of a tiny orchard, it was also extra awesome when you could trick a sibling or cousin into taking a bite out of an apple from the tree closest to the outhouse!
Also in her little house was a tiny cupboard built into a wall such that there was glass facing into three rooms. It always had religious stuff in it and I used to wonder what it was for. It was too high to be able to look through into the other rooms. Turns out, back in the day, they could put a candle in and the light would shine into three rooms.
I remember them and have seen them in use, but never had to use one since we were just visiting for the day. Those were only used by small children, at night or in bad weather when the outhouse was the less desirable option - as in less desirable than keeping human waste under one’s bed in a pot with a lid set on top, which pot would have to be taken outside, dumped and cleaned at the earliest opportunity.
We called it a “slop jar”. A “chamber pot” was what the uppity folks used.