When I first entered San Luis Obispo County twenty-seven years ago with the expectation of retiring in this locale, I began reading local weeklies and monthlies. In one, it offered the news of a man arrested underneath the women's toilet in a park (Morro Bay I believe) who had sneaked into the septic catchment under said toilet. Donned in a raincoat, he made enough noise to suggest human occupancy and the police were called.* Such an unwarranted invasion negates the notion of an outhouse offering privacy to its user. And if one can't find privacy in a privie, where then?
During my earlier studies in anthropology, I always had a tinge of disappointment when researchers of primitive tribes failed to offer information on how people handled their waste or what they used to wipe their ‘private' areas. A cursory search today shows that the ancient Greeks used pieces of pottery and early Romans used sponges. Likely early Cro-Magnon tribes didn't concern themselves with probable witnesses observing such eliminations; nor had the need to wash their hands. Perhaps when humanity reached the early stages of civilization, they stood or crouched behind vegetation or boulders. But, we'll never know when modesty became critical and the matter required cultural boundaries.
At some point when hunters and gatherers settled down into farming communities, I'm confident they had special areas to defecate and urinate away from living quarters. It follows that such areas were eventually enclosed for privacy. Ipso facto, privies.
After contracting in 1985 to have a functionally comfortable frame home erected on three acres, I went to the planning department and inquired about self-contained, Swedish designed, composting toilets. A staff member of the planning department said such were not allowed. I can't understand why not, but that's why I'm a squire and not a city planner. In that I'm not on the sewer line, I'm allowed a septic tank. Not that I abhor having a home offering two flushing toilets emptying into a septic tank with the overflow seeping into a leach field, but there's a contradiction there somehow.
Notwithstanding the above, I have consistently harbored a desire to build (out of old lumber) an old-timey outhouse on my western up slope. Mostly for decoration, but have it available for seldom-needed utilitarian purposes — a simple wooden box over a pit, and a sack of lime within. Inside, one meets a single-holed bench covered with an old toilet seat. High on the entry door, you'll note both a circular cut out above a quarter moon cut out — the cutouts symbolizing the privy's unisexual attraction. (Go to Cecil Adams' "The Straight Dope" for the origin of such cutouts.)
Outhouses, loos, crappers, backhouses, thrones, necessaries — primitive toilets by any name — were common in the United States up through the 1940s. Such constructions have memorable moments in my life's file cabinet. When eight years old, and traveling the U.S.A. cross-country in 1939 with my parents and two younger siblings, I have three recollections of outhouses in rural areas. The first relates to our living for a couple of nights in an Iowa farmhouse far from town. Yes, it offered a Sears & Roebuck catalog along with a roll of toilet paper. The second memory occurred in Alabama and the third in Georgia I believe. Then the family returned to the Panama Canal Zone where all residents had hot and cold water and flush toilets – the kind with an elevated water tank and a pull-chain.
Not until returning to the U.S.A. in 1944 did my association with outhouses resume. We lived in a rural community called Norco outside Corona, CA. Within that locale, outhouses were ubiquitous and tempting targets. What country lad in ages past didn't knock over an outhouse on Halloween? As a humorous aside, a friend told me that one Kansas farmer secretly moved his outhouse forward so that when tricksters tried to push the outhouse forward, they'd fall into the hole. In Norco, my mother and we four children lived in two separate rentals with outdoor toilets.
My father returned to his family after WWII ended. Soon thereafter, during the summer of 1946, we moved onto an empty lot in the eastern edge of Corona on unincorporated land. My brother and I had to dig the hole for the family's privy, soon constructed by my father. Come winter, a crude wooden structure allowed the family of six to move indoors. But that outhouse invited occupancy for at least three subsequent years until my mother had a local tradesman improve the '‘main house' and include an indoor bathroom with a flush toilet.
By then I had entered the U.S. Army, where I subsequently encountered additional episodes involving outhouses. For example, while spending a weekend with an army buddy at his family home in Schulenburg, TX, such a home had an unlit outhouse. Using my cigarette lighter to illuminate the interior, the lighter slipped out of my hand to land you know where. I paid one of my friend's sisters fifty cents to retrieve it.
One might think that I might not have had many further experiences with outdoor toilets. Yet, the U.S. offers countless rest stops far removed from sewer lines along our highway grids. Further, construction sites abound with portable chemical 'terlits.' Shouldn't we also include travelers in trailers, 5th wheels, and motor homes with their mobile privies?
Also, once I began checking out sources providing info on outhouses, I couldn't help but think of two corollary subjects: toilet paper and soap. Perhaps down the line, I might research those two for an article. I'll have to give that possibility some serious thought however. After all, one thing leads to another, and soon t.p. and cleansing agents will soon present their corollaries ad infinitum ad nauseum. Besides, corollaries require relentless mastication, resist digestion, and a researcher ends up with incurable constipation don'tcha know?
* The male trespasser turned out to be a nurse, and the police called in the fire department to hose the suspect before transporting him to the station for booking.
