The Wilson Post
LEBANON WEATHER

A primer on those little ole wooden shacks out back




Linda Nipp stands in front of the outhouse on the century farm known as Blue Lake Ranch where she and her husband board horses. She says the privy “is 100 years old at least and still in use.” It stands 8-feet high and is about 4-foot-square with a tin roof. The farm was once the Central Pike Dairy, operated by her grandfather, Dr. Lee Wright, a physician who also had a mule trading center and a tobacco farm in the community once called Dodoburg.KEN BECK

Linda Nipp stands in front of the outhouse on the century farm known as Blue Lake Ranch where she and her husband board horses. She says the privy “is 100 years old at least and still in use.” It stands 8-feet high and is about 4-foot-square with a tin roof. The farm was once the Central Pike Dairy, operated by her grandfather, Dr. Lee Wright, a physician who also had a mule trading center and a tobacco farm in the community once called Dodoburg.KEN BECK

Many of you young whippersnappers may never have had the challenge of stepping into an outhouse to take care of business.

But for most of us in our seventh decade or more, spotting one of these vintage wooden structures along a stretch of country road may revive memories that do not carry the scent of nostalgia or sentimentality.

A century ago, practically every farmhouse, rural schoolhouse and church house had one or maybe two of these utilitarian sheds somewhere out back. The small building bore other names such as toilet, privy and latrine.

These often held a Sears and Roebuck catalog in lieu of toilet paper. If a catalog was not handy, then fresh, soft corn cobs would make do.

The 1950 census tallied 50 million outhouses in the U.S. By 2000, the number had trickled to 671,000. I am sure there are far less today, but I have not made a head count. From my drives around Wilson County, however, I only know of a half dozen or so.

As a wee lad of the 1950s, I recollect that both sets of my grandparents had outhouses in their backyards. One pair lived in rural Tennessee and the other in a small Arkansas town. My Arkie grandparents’ rustic outdoor bathroom was a two-seater, a real convenient way to get to know your kinfolk.

Coming from the suburbs to stay with my parents’ parents was almost always a wondrous time, but trips to the old outhouse, always an adventure, were not part of the fun.

For those uninitiated to using a privy, know this: summer was far worse than winter as the ripe smells emanating from the pit below were strong enough to resurrect a dead possum. On top of that were the biting horseflies, the deathly fear of brushing up against yellowjackets, wasps or black widow spiders and, worst of all, the chance of encountering a snake. 

Inspired by Roosevelt

I owe a sort of gratitude to outhouses because they provided a livelihood for my Tennessee granddaddy during the Great Depression. In later decades he became a contractor who built houses and sealed the deal with simply a handshake, but along about 1934 he was greatly relieved to get a job with the WPA (Works Projects Administration) via Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Grandpa and a crew of fellows built outhouses across Cannon County at a pace of about two a week. I estimate he may have helped erect 200 or so. It was not a glorious task but in the heart of the Depression, the job brought in hard cash (his salary was $2 a day) and put bread on the table.

 FDR’s wife, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, was a driving force behind the more than two million outhouses constructed by the WPA because sanitation in rural areas, notably in the South, was poor and hookworms proved a big problem for barefoot kids.

Due to her efforts, the structures earned two more nicknames — “the Eleanor” and “the Roosevelt Room.”

The cost for property owners to get a new outhouse ran from $5 to $17 for the materials. The labor was free, courtesy of Uncle Sam. According to the website casebarlow.com, WPA outhouses had a one-piece concrete foundation with a raised seat of cast concrete that sat over a hole in the ground. The toilet seat was wooden. The wood frame building was 4-feet-3-inches square and had a tin roof that sloped from 7-feet-6-inches in the front to 6-feet-4-inches in back.

A 1997 Knight-Ridder News Service article reported a two-hole outhouse in a federal park in Pennsylvania cost the National Park Service at least $333,000. Bad Deal.

One other important note: when there were two outhouses at a public site, occasionally one would have a crescent moon cut in the door and the other a circle or star.

Suburban myth has it that the moon, the symbol for the Roman moon goddess, Luna, meant this was the ladies’ outhouse, while the circle or star, which represented the Greek male sun god, Apollo, signified this one was for guys.

Honoring the structures

How many outhouses are still standing? That’s anybody’s guess.

But, believe it or not, there are at least three outhouse museums in North America. They include the South Dakota Outhouse Museum in Colome, S.D.; the Outhouse Museum in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Canada; and, in Elk Falls, Kansas, the self-proclaimed Outhouse Capital of Kansas, aka the World largest Living Ghost Town. The latter holds an annual open house and outhouse tour the Friday and Saturday before Thanksgiving.

Should that be hard to believe then you may find the 30th annual World Championship Outhouse Races in Virginia City, Nevada, on Oct. 5, even more preposterous.

According to the Virginia City website, this is one time and place where potty humor is accepted and encouraged. This free event dates back when outdoor plumbing was outlawed in Virginia City. Angry residents took to the streets with their outhouses in protest, and a tradition was born. This hilarious event pits teams of costumed outhouse racers against each other in an all-out potty race pushing their home-made outhouses down C Street toward the toilet paper finish line to claim the latrine title. It is preceded by the Parade of Outhouses.

Virginia City holds no monopoly on such madcap merriment. Other cities that host outhouse scampers include Anchorage, Alaska; Breckenridge, Colo.; Concully, Wash.; Trenary, Mich.; and Mackinaw City, Mich., where the event is billed as “The Best Case of the Runs You’ll Ever Have.” (I am not making this up.)

Tennessee is not to be left out.

 Nashville held its first annual Mayors’ Outhouse Race in 1981. That also may have been its last.

And Clay County Moonshine Daze, a festival held 65 miles northeast of Lebanon in Celina, Tenn., has featured an annual outhouse race on Labor Day weekend, but, alas, it was discontinued last year.  

I had considered competing myself but was afraid were I to win I wouldn’t be able to contain myself.

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