The Outhouse

When I was four we lived in a small town in rural Kentucky, no electricity, no radio, no TV , no running water / indoor bathrooms. Our bathroom was an outhouse, a small wooden shed over a six to eight foot deep hole with a bench inside that had one or two circular holes that you would sit over to do your business, it had a wooden door for privacy, and was generally dark and smelly inside.

To a four year old it was one of the scariest places in the world you had to go, probably for adults too.

You just knew there were giant spiders or monsters down there just waiting to pull you down in their lair.

Our next door neighbor was an older man with a weird sense of humor. He ran a small rope from his kitchen to the back of his outhouse, and had it rigged in such a way that when he pulled on the rope it pulled down on a stick that had a rubber glove on one end, and the end with the glove would go up and smack the part of the person using the outhouse right on the part sitting over the hole in the board. This was followed by a loud scream and a person exiting the outhouse at maximum speed.

No one ever took time to pull up their pants before running for their life. With no other entertainment to be had, it was always a break in the boredom when our neighbor had a visitor that did not know the secrets of the outhouse !