When I grew up, people had a little building in their backyards. They called it by several names, such as outhouse, privy, or simply the toilet. The bees and flies swarmed around it on hot summer days, and in the winter it was freezing cold. We didn't mind because it was such a necessity.
The pages of the Sears and Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs were used for toilet paper. These hard pages were a far cry from the soft tissue we use today, but somehow I miss the entertainment I got from looking at the catalogues. My girlfriends and I spent many hours enjoying the pictures of these books. Here our dreams and wishes came alive as we chose things we hoped someday to have. "Now look at this What a darling outfit!" "That's how the man will look that I'm going to marry." "This is a picture of me in my wedding dress." Such conversation went on and on.
When it was my turn to wash the dishes, I would make an excuse to go to the outhouse. There I stayed for a long time, hoping that someone would wash the dishes, but that never happened. The dishes waited. The only bad thing about the old outhouse was keeping it clean, and that was my job. This had to be done every Saturday. I scrubbed the wood with homemade soap and rinsed it with clean water. I filled the holes with ashes from our old kitchen stove to keep the insects away and dispel the smell.
The big boys had fun on Halloween, pushing over outhouses even if someone happened to be inside them. During the depression years, work was hard to find and our government created jobs for the men. One job was building new toilets all over the U. S. These were much nicer than most of the old ones. The floors and holes were made of cement. There was just one seat, and it had a covering to keep insects away. We called these buildings Roosevelt Monuments, named after our President.
After I was married, we had to use the old outhouse because we did not have a bathroom. I didn't go there to dream and make wishes, I went there for peace and quiet and to try and solve problems. I wondered what was best for my family, how to stretch money, how to keep a peaceful happy home life.
With three generations of family living together, there were trials. Sometimes I would get depressed and feel that I was going to explode. Then I went to the outhouse and had a good cry, and soon I felt better. I dried my eyes and walked back into my home, and no one knew that Mom had cried.
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