Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Must have been an extremely slow days at the "ministries"!
Was there a point to this conversation, or are the bowel movements in non-plumbed facilities just that entertaining????
Corvette Ministries never has extremely slow days!
Just a curious question to those privy to the info!
The one Grandpa built in MN just had three holes, S, M, and L - no lids, and no lime! That was probably fine in the colder months, but we visited in the summer, and ... (ooops, almost broke my promise!)
Do we have the same Grandpa? Nope, mine was in MI, not the same one. Grandpa & Grandma had the one with 3 holes, artfully carved out/shaped.
We lived next door in a rural area. We didn't have an indoor toilet until 1967. Since that time I have used "pit" toilets since we camp and travel. I also stepped up in the last county we lived in to help to defend the Amish way of life when it came to their "facilities".
I have also used a solar composting toilet at a park in AZ desert and KS has a composting toilet at one of their rest stops, both give the same "feel" (deep dark hole below) as an outhouse.
A great book on the subject is: "The Humanure Handbook". It is a everything you would like to know book.
When I have to go, I am thankful for whatever facilities are available.
I've been in public restrooms with flush toilets that turned my stomach and made my skin crawl. I'd take the facilities in most of these photos any day of the week.
When I was about 15, I went with a friend of mine to her family's cabin which didn't have any plumbing. The outhouse was affectionately known as "Coonsville" because of the raccoons who like to visit it.
There was another time camping, it wasn't an outhouse but just a folding toilet seat next to a stick that had a can on it. When you were done, you took the can to scoop dirt to cover your...um...stuff. When we left, we packed up the toilet seat.
When I was growing up, my parents owned a lot on and island in Lake Michigan. Every summer, we would camp for 6 weeks. Literally in tents. My mom was so organized that one of our tents was designated the "food" tent. We were quite tight financially, so my mom would pack up all sorts of dry goods, tofu for protein, fresh eggs (didn't need refrigeration) and would cook on a coleman stove. Our fresh meat was the fish that we caught. Mom would salt them down after we caught and cleaned them and throw them in a bucket of water overnight. She'd fry up fish and eggs for breakfast.
Anyhow, I got off topic there. My dad dug a big hole and put a 50 gallon drum in the hole. He had build a box with a toilet seat on it and hung a hula hoop from the trees and hung a shower curtain from the hula hoop for privacy. Rule was if you did #1, you tossed in a handful of sand. If you did #2, you tossed in two or three handfuls of sand down into the hole. I don't remember a bad smell at all.
I grew up with outhouses, had ours into the 70's. My Mother sold it to a tourist that was visiting someone in town and had never seen or used one. He hauled it away on a trailer. I think she got $25 for it. We laughed about it for a long time.
Believe it or not, I have a book of poems about outhouses. It's called 'Muddled Meanderings in an Outhouse' by Bob Ross from Bozeman, Montana. Don't know if its still in print but you could probably google it and find it somewhere. Pretty true and funny poems.
Yup. My inlaws cabin in way way northern Maine had one. They installed indoor plumbing and a septic holding tank a few years ago. There are still quite a few recreational properties around them that still use outhouses.
Port-a-potties are about as close to an outhouse as one can get nowadays, I guess. But what I refer to is much less "sophisticated," for lack of a better word.
PaP's lack a certain air of yesterday's OH's as there were no built-in chemicals. There are also usually much fewer flies. (There goes my promise again.)
The reason that most outhouses disappeared was because Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck quit making those big catalogs ! (Those that grew up with OH's will know what I mean)
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
(Those that grew up with OH's will know what I mean)
