I was sitting in my Canadian outhouse one morning last weekend. The morning was chilly but nice. The little gas heater my husband placed nearby kept me toasty, and for some reason, I began thinking about “outhouses.” Possibly because Halloween is coming and the old custom of “tipping” outhouses came to mind.
If you aren’t familiar with outhouses, it’s what people use when there is no “indoor plumbing.” It’s a small building placed over a hole in the ground with a sitting bench that holds a hole or two, which is where you do your “business.” I was sitting in one because our cabin has no running water, same as many of our Canadian neighbors.
For many years tipping over outhouses on Halloween night was a revered tradition and commonly done, but it’s a tradition rapidly fading into the halls of history. Seventy or more years ago, Halloween Eve was more than children in costumes tippy-toeing from one house to another, chanting trick or treat, then grabbing their goody bags and running to the next place.
No. In a bygone era, trick or treat was a matter of extortion. “Gimme a treat or I’ll play a trick on you.” Smashing pumpkins and toilet-papering houses or trees were among favorite pranks, but the most popular one was knocking over outhouses.
I never tipped an outhouse, but I have certainly used my share of them. Some fond outhouse memories came to mind.
Having lived on a farm for the first eight years of my life, using an outhouse as a child was the norm. Even the country school I attended had outhouses. You got accustomed to the cold, or heat, the rudimentary toilet paper. Sometimes it was a Sears or other store’s catalog. You got used to the aroma, which was worse in the summer heat and tolerable in the winter – if you could stand the frost on the seat.
Our farmhouse had indoor plumbing but, for convenience of workers and hired men, an outhouse was placed on the edges of the farmyard. This was great for a kid playing in the apple orchard who didn’t want to take the time to go all the way back to the house.
The nicest outhouse in my life was the openair one Dick and I used during our year in the woods on Tucker Lake. We never built walls around the platform, so while using it was sometimes a chilling experience, we were never bothered by an unpleasant fragrance.
That brings me to my current outhouse, which is a bit different from the others. The back half of the building doubles as an equipment storage shed, so as I sit and think all these serious thoughts, I’m staring directly into the face of a log splitter.
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