As many of you know, my dad grew up - til he was 15 - on a dairy farm in central Ohio, in a place called Hopewell. Aunt Ruth, the youngest sister of granddad - dad's dad - lives on a farm a tad West of there called Jacksontown. Growing up, we visited Aunt Ruth on her farm, as we still do today. When Aunt Ruth and Uncle John (he died when i was 4) bought there house, it had the same model woodstove in the kitchen that John's parents had when they married. And a pump in the corner of the kitchen, which pumped into a trough/sink that drained through the side of the house. And there was a WPA outhouse not too far outside, and a bit to the East of the North door. The outhouse had a West-facing door that opened to the North.
The seat was concrete, and the walls were wood. I think there were two seats, but i only recall one.
And there's still a pump outside the North door, but i don't think water's run from it in most of a quarter century at this point.
I remember visiting Aunt Ruth when i was i think 19. I was chasing my then-10-year-old cousin R around the house. As we came round from the West side to the North, i stopped short, mouth open staring, and stopped laughing. R stopped, turned around, came over, and asked what was wrong. "The outhouse is gone", i said, pointing. "You mean the tool shed"? Patting her kindly on the head, "Yes, R, the tool shed; the tool shed is gone."
It made me sad to see it gone. I'd only used it a few times, when there was a line for the bathroom, which along with a deep freezer and washer and dryer, are in what was a bedroom off of the kitchen.
It was torn out to accommodate a larger garage. Discussing it's removal with my cousins, we all missed it, and we all thought that a privy in the corner of the garage would be a pretty neat thing, esp since we all remember using it when the bathroom was not available. Ah, well, things they change.
This brief memoir brought to you complements of this most interesting documentary about outhouses, which i ganked from
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dc_gay_man, includes someone else mentioning the WPA outhouses and has pictures of them being built, among stories from people and less-interesting outhouse races in the last 20 minutes of the 60-minuet run time. It's well worth the watch:
The Shiver Shack from
Roberta Pacino on
Vimeo.
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branchandroot
