Spent some of my childhood on a farm in rural Georgia. We were so far back in the woods that we didn’t have indoor plumbing, water from a well. No phone service because the closest phone poles were five miles away. We were way down a bunch of dirt road, old fieldstone foundation wooden farmhouse that was at least 100 years old when we got there.
And a two-holer, which even though there were eight of us, we used one at a time.
Not only did it have wasps, we also had an attack of bats one night and my mother shot the structure up with the shotgun getting them out of there. It was o’dark thirty and she thought whatever was in there sounded like a snake, which was an even scarier proposition than bats, that area had big ass rattlesnakes and copperheads.
I was overjoyed to leave to a new house with indoor plumbing and hot running water and phone service. A little later on in the hippie days when everybody was talking about “going back to Nature,” and “living on the Land,” I was not at all inclined to go with them. Been there, done that, no thanks.
Doctor Jackson reminds me, we also had “thunderjugs” inside when the weather was inclement. They lived under the bed and were emptied every morning.
Oh yeah, when I lived upstairs and the outhouse was way back over the brook, I had one under the bed. Made of china, and it had a cover. Looked much like a soup tureen.
Only used it for liquid matter. My mother did call it a “chamber pot.” Amazing how many names they had, but I always thought “thunder mug” was pretty funny.
And yup, will be 91 in about four months. As they used to say in Vermont, I lost my mind, but I don’t miss it none.
And then there was the tourist who asked a farmer in VT if the summers were short. He replied, "Ayup. Last year it came on a Tuesday.
My brother’s first house in Alaska had no running water, so an outhouse was necessary. Just a one-holer. I hated visiting him in the winter.
In Vietnam, everybody used outhouses. Being Seabees, ours was a 4-holer, while the Marine’s had 2-holers. I’m not sure it’s actually a benefit to have more people defecating with you, however. My brother’s crapper had a lime pit under it, but the ones in 'Nam had burn barrels with diesel fuel under them.
I remember using one at some point as a kid, but I can’t quite remember where it was. It would have been in some outdoor gathering situation, though. I remember what freaked me out the most was no place to wash my hands, something that was imprinted on me quite early was absolutely required to avoid getting sick by some puppets at school.
I do remember it was just called an outhouse, though.
I’ve used a few (called “Outhouses” around here, not “priveys”). To be fair, they weren’t at anyone’s homes, but at cheap-ass campgrounds and other places our family went to for vacation.
I remember having to use an outhouse at Girl Scout camp, but I swear they called it the “greenie”. I could be mis-remembering though.
My great-aunt and uncle lived in very rural West Virginia and they didn’t have an indoor toilet until the early 80s. Apparently my parents took me out to visit them when I was very young and Mom swore we wouldn’t go back until they got indoor plumbing.
When ai was growing up, in the late sixties, some of my rural poor classmates didn’t have indoor plumbing.
The worst plumbing free Park Service toilet I ever didn’t use was at Badwater in Death Valley. This is the lowest geographical point in the US. I think it was 117 degrees the day I was there. And I took one step inside the bathroom and stepped out, I couldn’t do it. I made my boyfriend drive off the road and I found a place behind a rock.
About 20 years ago, my family had a reunion at an abandoned farm that was the family homestead in the early 20th century. Instead of renting Port-o-Sans, they just built 2 wooden outhouses from scratch, spacious ones with very deep holes and real toilet seats. And it was much nicer than a Port-o-San and not gross at all —- because they were only used that one day.
In my Mother’s home town all the houses still had one. They were ancient, and only used when the electricity was out. (Water for flushing, etc. was pulled up from the well by electric pumps.) So I used it a couple of times after a storm. We had regular TP, and usually a bucket of ashes, a ladleful went into the hole after each use. The ladies would get very upset when folks spilled ashes all over the seat.
I suspect that when the weather was fine, and there was company in the house, the gentlemen would use it to “read the paper.”
Once in the late 80’s I visited with some native Americans in the Charlottesville, VA area. They had a privy that needed replacement, so I helped with digging the new one and moving the building. Being the newbie, I ended up carrying on the gamey end. Whoo-eee what a stink!
I doubt it, because that’s what they called the house where the facilities were at the summer camp I went to for several years. This was an all-boys camp on the Mattaponi River in the Tidewater part of Virginia. Where was your Girl Scout camp?
Interestingly enough, the greenie at our camp, while it was a single open room, five-holer, with a trough if you were just there to take a piss, it did have flush toilets, using water pumped up from the river.
The greenie. Hadn’t heard that phrase in nearly 50 years, and it’s been almost as long since it had crossed my thoughts.
The little church where I went to Sunday School when I was small was only open in the summer, as it had no heat or plumbing. Water came from a hand pump, and there were two privies back at the edge of the woods. They were surrounded by poison ivy and full of spiders and mosquitoes, and stank. This was Upstate New York, 1950’s to early 1960’s.
In the 1980’s, visited relatives in Finland at their summer cabin. They had an outhouse, but it was scrupulously clean and had no bad odor whatsoever. Another Finnish relative, in a large old farmhouse, had an outhouse inside the cowbarn. Her adult children kept offering to put in an indoor toilet, but she thought that sounded disgustingly unsanitary. Much better to put on boots in the middle of sub-zero weather in the middle of the night and trudge through the snow to the barn, warmed by the body heat of cows.
When my mother was small, they had a privy. There were large holes for adults, and small ones for the children.
Every morning, I write a list of things I’m grateful for. Indoor plumbing and flush toilets often appear on the list.
The Potomac Appalachian Trail Club has cabins at various places near the AT that members can reserve to stay in. Back in the 1980s when I was still a member, I think they had one cabin with indoor plumbing, the rest all had outhouses.
Now I remember I did frequent a house that had something close to a privy growing up – the people in the farmhouse across the road used to babysit my brother and I, and they had built their own home. The toilet had a straight drop into the septic system, and it did have a lid but no handle. It was in its own room inside the house, however. ETA: late 70s/early 80s, upstate NY.
I moved to Arkansas in 1977, and knew several people who had outhouses. I worked with a guy whose family didn’t have an outhouse until he was in high school.
Am I the only doper that still has a functioning outhouse? I’m trying to think if I’ve ever lived at a place that didn’t have a biffy, even if only a part time biffy.
Maybe ten years or so I had a reunion with an old flame from years gone by. We were reminiscing and I got curious as to why we didn’t “work” out. She revealed that the main reason was that she thought she’d be forever stuck with an outhouse the rest of her life.
Years later I did add modern facilities but we always kept the outhouse just because it was handy. When it filled up the last time, I was dealing with budding pyromaniacs. Wrapped feathers in the kid’s hair and handed them a box of matches and my blessing.
Bunch of naked savages danced around that bonfire for many hours.
Some years back, I nearly stumbled into the old outhouse hole. Considered finding enough fill to fill the hole but decided it would be easier to build an new outhouse over the existing hole.
Well, according to my mom, my great - uncle Wilbur, who lived across the barnyard from their house, had an old axle and two wheels adjacent to the house in the barnyard. He’d do his business by sitting on the axle and hanging his rear over.
