I live in farm country, and am curious as to why outhouses always seem to have a little moon-shaped cutout on the door. What’s the connection, if any?
See the Great Master’s words on this topic.
seafoamgreen writes:
> I live in farm country, and am curious as to why outhouses always seem to
> have a little moon-shaped cutout on the door.
Where are there still outhouses, on farms or anywhere else?
They’re still around. I occassionally see them in rural areas, though far less often than when I was growing up. If you consider a modern Port-a-Potty to be a contemporary cousin to the outhouse, then they’re not that rare, after all.
lots of farms and churches still have them, but for decoration, not for use.
There’s a couple out on the farm. One’s near the garden and has been there for years and years. I vaguely remember moving it there, to a new hole (the old one having been filled up), when I was just a kid. This would have been a few years after Dad installed the whole indoor plumbing thing. It still gets used occasionally in summer, but it wouldn’t be replaced if it burned down or anything. The other is out across the pasture where the they’re trying to get an orchard going. It’s a couple hundred yards from the house, so we set up an outhouse there.
A decorative shitter?
It’s called “rustic charm” now, and manifests in obscene amounts of grapevine wreathage, outhouse kitsch, fake gingham, and bovine motifs…
I have a friend living in Alaska with no indoor toilets. Even in the dead of winter, he goes out to an outhouse. The seat is made of styrofoam, so it isn’t cold long.
Outhouses are still certainly in use in rural areas. In the coastal California mountains where I grew up, having a septic tank installed was “prohibitively expensive” and logistically complicated. Our house was was constructed on a rather steep slope, with a lot of trees in the way. And (most importantly) while he was alive, my father was unbelievably cheap and stubborn.
We opted for a composting toilet with a heating element, kept in a small room with an adjoining door that we built on the back deck, instead of having to perpetually dig and move an outhouse, though that was what many of our neighbors did.
My mom started a bit of a trend shortly after my dad passed away. After almost 20 years of living with a constantly rumbling throne that had to be emptied, with a perpetually breaking fan, she decided that a flushing toilet wasn’t “prohibitively expensive” anymore. Suddenly, there was a rash of septic tank requests all along Wilder Ridge, as wives and girlfriends took advantage of my Mom’s precident.
I take some credit for catalizing my Mom’s decision. In the days immediately following my father’s sudden and unexpected passing, Mom and I had to carry the damn broken composter out of the house, because it was smelling so bad, in anticipation of the convergance of friends and family at the house.
Mom might’ve made some sort of comment indicating that maybe it could be fixed, and I might’ve accidentally kicked it down the stairs to ensure that wasn’t the case.
The (general aviation) airport I fly out of doen’t have running water. The outhouses are in quite bad shape. The flying club bought a port-a-pottie because the outhouses were so bad.
Brian
Actually it’s just as cold as the ambient environment, and being such a good insulator probably takes longer to get warmed up than something else would. But… it doesn’t transfer heat very well at all, so it seems like it’s warmer than, say, steel would. :eek:
I double dog dare ya!
yes, we decorate our old-timey toilets out here! there is nothing else to do, especially once we are done putting little costumes on our ceramic geese sculptures on our front lawns!
a port a potty was thought an improvment on an OUTHOUSE!!! I HATE, the smell of port a potties…they smell so chemical…
on a related note, I knew a family with the last name of Outhouse.
We bought an old farm house and it had an outhouse, So what, you say?
It was a double seater, complete with nail for the sears catalog.
Picture you and your beloved, huddled over your individual holes, picking out what neato things are available this year from Sears & Roebuck.
No. I never used it.
What, no corn cobs?
I read the Thread title, & thought–“Dropping the seat of your Space Suit leads to explosive decompression of the bowels & testicles! BAD IDEA! BAD IDEA!”
Then, I had coffee, & all became clear.
Carry on.
Well, see
*We like the moon,
'Cause it is close to us…* 