Opinion & Comment

Outhouse hole-sizing difficult without model

APPALACHIAN NOTEBOOK - Steve Oden

I recently read a statistic about outdoor toilets. If it can be believed, over 4 million outhouses are still in use across the United States. Another million or so privies are considered antiques, restored and cherished by collectors or preserved as conversation pieces. Finally, hidden among overgrown farmsteads, beside abandoned mountain shacks, and behind ramshackle, vacant clapboard school buildings are relic outhouses, moldering structures covered in vines or underbrush. No one knows how many of these there might be.

Outhouse numbers have dwindled since the mid-20th Century, when an estimated 50 million outdoor toilets existed in the U.S. alone. This was the period during which I was introduced to my grandparents’ two-hole outhouse, a crazily leaning oaken structure covered by giant pokeberry bushes during the summer and exposed to the cold north wind in the winter. It was situated 30 yards from the back porch, squeezed between a corner of the cow shed and a dead chinaberry tree.

Although I hated using the outhouse as a boy, today I look back with nostalgia at those trips down the garden path. I honestly don’t remember getting anything done inside the outhouse. I sat there in fear of spiders and wasps during the day and “haints” during the night, when the slightest breeze caused skeletal chinaberry branches to scrape the roof. As I’ve written before, I loved my grandparents, but I loved going home to modern conveniences, including porcelain commodes and running water.

Having experienced outhouses (my grandparents’ church also had one, as did the cotton gin and general store), I am delighted to see a renewed interest in outside privies, new and old. In several Appalachian states, outhouses are used in state forests and along hiking trails in remote parks. I’ve seen – and used -- composting toilets at state-owned lakes, boat ramps, and wildlife refuges.

So enthusiastic am I about this subject, I have decided to build an outhouse on my 40 acres. I’ve searched high and low for the site of the original privy. Our farmhouse was built in 1898, but many of the original outbuildings are long gone. The cellar house still stands, built into the side of a hill. I speculate the outhouse was nearby.

My new outhouse will be mainly for decoration and garden accent. However, I intend for it to be a fully functioning two-seat chemical model, built in classic pre-CCC style. Countless outhouses were constructed by the Civilian

Conservation Corps during the 1930s-40s and called “Roosevelt Loo’s,” in honor of FDR. These were government-designed privies, with concrete floors and risers, often with the names of the builders scrawled into the wet cement.

My outhouse will be built along simpler lines, like those ubiquitous wooden privies erected in the rural foothills for hundreds of years. It won’t have a pit, however. If used at all – perhaps when crowds of holiday company tax our house’s indoor facilities and visiting folks want to experience bathroom ala’ Appalachia – the outhouse will have the same sanitization equipment as a camper or RV.

But, while planning my outhouse, I tripped over a Big Mystery. That being, does anyone know the exact dimensions of the holes to be cut in the bench? A friend asked why outhouses had two or more seats in the first place. I knew the answer: Two-hole models had separate adult- and child-sized openings. The old-timers knew, from bitter experience, that a kid could jack-knife and fall into the outhouse pit if the hole was too large. Public privies, such as those at churches, train depots, or hotels, might sport three or more seats. People 100 years ago were not as modest about natural functions and believed if you had to go, you had to go, company or not. It still seems strange that they could sit, side by side, and, well… you know.

So, what’s the right size for the holes? Should a generic hole be cut, let’s say, one to fit any normal adult posterior? What is “normal” in the first place? You might laugh, but this is an important consideration, comfort- and hygiene-wise.

Since my wife refused to “model” on the outhouse bench so I could draw an outline of her derriere, I was forced to consult local experts: The Amish. They still build outhouses for their residences and schools.

When I approached an Amish acquaintance and asked the question, he couldn’t stop laughing long enough to answer. Soon, I had a whole crowd of Amish carpenters slapping their knees and stomping their booted feet in Dutch hilarity. The older guys, especially, seemed to appreciate the comedy.

It took a while for me to understand. The Amish are an energetic and active people. They eat high calorie and high fat diets, but you seldom see much obesity in their communities, even among the aged. They burn it off with hard work.

We “Englishmen,” as the Amish call us, change shapes and sizes as we age. We tend to get broader and heavier, more pear-shaped, because of our lethargic lifestyle and dependence on machines. Let’s face it, the Amish are great observers for all their private ways, and they think we are fat folk.

The Amish carpenters went back to work and never shared the secret of outhouse seat sizing, but a less taciturn Mennonite advised: “Make the hole smaller at first if you marry a young wife, but be prepared to expand the opening. Are you handy with a saw?”

I am back to begging my wife. She’s not excited about my outhouse project in the first place. My wheedling has not produced acquiescence to permit her lovely, in my opinion (really), posterior to be used as a seat-hole template. This woman who I’ve been married to for 34 years has never even told me how much she weighs. She balked at being an outhouse model.

“No chance! Absolutely not! Nada!” she said. “If I agree, you will write about it in that column.”

I can’t imagine why she objects to being written up, especially if there is more than one way to size an outhouse hole. If she catches me with her new blue jean pants and those pillows off the couch, I am a dead man. Maybe that’s what the Amish didn’t want to tell me.