The Little House out Back

I am sure a lot of my cousins can relate to this story from the book. I am editing and editing and editing. Somehow, I thought writing a book would be easier than this, similar to an essay test, write something down, hand it in, and be done. But no, there is grammar, chapters, paragraphs, and continuity of the storyline. I hope I get to keep this story in the book, it paints a very vivid picture of growing up in the sixties, poor and rural. Enjoy!

Our outhouse was a “two-holer,” but no one had been creative enough to cut different sizes. We inherited from the previous owners a small shanty with two adult-sized circles in a wooden box over the hole. I remember being so small that I had a realistic fear of falling into that hole, visualizing my body folding in half and snapping me downward into the darkness.

Do you want a vision of hell if you are a Christian? Look into the depths of the dark outhouse hole and let your imagination run wild. There were no electric lights in the outhouse; you found your way in the darkness with trepidation. Leaving the door open in the daytime was an option, as it was up the hill behind the house, privacy secured by lilac bushes. After dark, you went by memory.  Several times a day, I would perch my skinny child butt on the very edge of the hole, leaning forward so as not to let me fold in half and make my fears a reality.  I wasn’t afraid of eternal damnation and hellfire; I was afraid of drowning in a pit filled with several years’ worth of human shit.

A tiny ledge on the top boards over the wooden box gave me a grip with my fingertips, which had the tensile strength of a professional concert pianist. The toilet paper was within an adult's reach, hanging several steps away on a nail in the wall. Reaching for it meant releasing my grip on safety, jumping down to the floor, grabbing the paper, wiping while standing up, and pulling up my pants.

Sometimes, the toilet paper was the Sears Catalog placed on the boards between the holes. It was a huge catalog in those days, with at least three inches of advertisements. The glossy pages were worthless with no absorbency, but the tissue-paper-thin index pages were quickly employed.  In the fall, Mom would buy a case of apples and pears from the fundraising local FFA (Future Farmers of America) members from New York Mills High School. Wrapped around each apple and pear was a square of tissue paper. Oh, holy joy, those wrapping papers were soft! Dad and Mom told me the horror stories of their childhood; they had to use shelled corn cobs and corn leaves!  I hoped they were kidding, but I knew with all their brothers and sisters, the Sears Catalog wouldn’t have gone very far.

Using the outhouse during a Minnesota winter was an outdoor adventure. With no electricity for lights in the outhouse, there was no heat source either. You would hike up your coat, sweater, and top shirt just enough to get your pants down, then your long johns (thermal underwear), and finally your panties. With a wind chill factor well below zero howling through the cracks in the loose boards of the outhouse, you did your business quickly. I yanked my knitted mittens off to get to my clothes and clung to the side of the wooden box like a howler monkey to a tree branch. Reading on the toilet was a summer pastime, reserved for when I had grown enough to let go and confidently hold a book.

Throughout our family history, stories and legends about outhouses abounded, especially when Dad insisted on putting the outhouse on the hill facing the road. With the door facing the driveway and yard, gravity prevented the door from securely latching. Sitting down facing the driveway, the door would slowly open as you went about your business. Just a few inches short of an adult’s arm's reach, you would be in the middle of your task, watching the door swing open.

No one thought of fixing the door to stay shut, tying a rope to hold onto the door, or installing a better latch. We are a family of farmers, not engineers. Dad pooh-poohed Mom’s complaints as quickly as the kids’ concerns. “It's not that big of a deal. You didn’t need to spend all day there anyway.”

That was until the day Dad was in the outhouse for his morning constitutional, and the door swung open just as a salesman drove into the yard. Dad was clearly visible to the salesman, making him trapped. The salesman walked up the hill and presented his entire sales pitch while Dad sat with his bib overalls around his ankles. “There wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do; the son-of-a -bitch wouldn’t shut up and leave me alone.  He just kept talking, and I couldn’t move.”  A new hole was dug, and the outhouse was moved that day.

The outhouse was an entity of its own. When I die, I want a wooden casket with a half-moon painted black on the side as a homage to my beginnings. My daughter has strict instructions: wrap me in the last quilt Mom ever sewed, place me in that wooden casket decorated as an outhouse, and take me home to Spruce Grove Union Cemetery. To me, the outhouse is a symbol of my beginnings and how far I have come.  It is also a reminder to myself to stay humble, never “get above my raising,” and never get uppity or big-headed.