@UpForItNow Long drops are very common at public rest areas on highways in outback regions of Australia (which is basically everywhere away from the south-eastern coastal fringe).
@GlitterEater no i have not got a clue what you are talking about. i answered a question in a genuine fashion about outside toilets and i get this nonsense
There was only one indoor bathroom in my grandfather's house in Nebraska, and there were a LOT of people there, all the time. Once, my grandmother was in the bathroom, camped out, and I REALLY had to go.
I asked my mother what to do and she told me to use the outhouse next to the barn. I asked her what to use for toilet paper and she told me to use a CORN COB. The only corn cobs were the old dried up ones that my grandfather had used to give him traction on the mud in the barnyard, and they were crawling with ants. I thought to myself...OW!!!
I got out to the outhouse, looked up from my seat, and saw this!
He was just hanging up in the corner, obviously looking for something to eat. THEN I started wondering what was right underneath my bum!!!!! I got out of there in a hurry. My mother refused to believe that there was a scorpion in the outhouse.
I also used an outhouse again when I was married for the second time. We used to go to the family cabin up in Maine, and of course there was an outhouse there, too. No scorpions, thankfully.
@4meAndyou Even if it doesn't kill you, they look like something that could cause pain. Caught them as a kid, managed to never get stung.😅 Scorpions are high on the creepy scale.
My maternal grandparents had an outdoor wooden outhouse, but it had a door that latched, and all. The reading material was 'toilet paper', and there'd be chickens running around underneath, sometimes. I never thought of it as an indignity, really, just [i]different[/i].
Some of the porta-potties at outdoor events I've used, however, would qualify as an indignity.
I guess I have lived in three places with outhouses. Never had any thoughts about it. Thing about it is that all of them had fantastic views and were in the coolest places I've lived. Where do people go when they camp? I guess they could be like a young kid we know that held it except to piss in the woods, that was cool as crap to the little kids.
One of the best holes I've seen was way out in the mountains. It was an open air seat, just a toilet seat mounted on top of a box, surrounded by small trees and brush, all nicely trimmed. It didn't smell bad, and none of the surrounding brush was close enough to creep you out while sitting there, but it gave complete privacy.
Yep, and I was just glad I had a toilet to use. The real indignities came when I had to burn fecal matter collected in field toilets (halves of 55-gallon drums) while in the Army. 🤮
@Ontheroad I remember when some kids complained that peeling taters for KP duty was beneath them, wait for it! One poor kid effed up so bad he was on latrine duties for a whole tour, now [b]THAT[/b] was indignant!
When I was a teen, my neighbors in the country had one. Did not have indoor plumbing until years later. Nothing wrong with that. I use a portable toilet on my jobs. Part of life. Do not be so sucky.
My grandparents' farmhouse in Poland had no indoor plumbing. The toilet and everything else were housed in outbuildings. There was no indignity, just a reflection of the infrastructure and technology available locally.
When i was at infants' school sixty years ago the toilets were outside. In the brig freeze-up of 1962-63 which lasted for a large chunk of the winter, something went wrong and there was water pouring continuously out of the overflow. Then one day it got so cold that there was no water anymore, just a big solid icicle. Never had outside toilets at home, though a lot of houses in the UK in those days still had no bathroom as such.
@helenS There would probably be be a washstand in the bedroom. Bathtimes in a tub (in front of the fire in winter). This sort of thing was on the way out by the '50s/'60's as new-build houses became available (big building programme in the postwar decades, no matter who was in power) and old ones were modified.
When I was a child we had an outside toilet cubicle behind the house. There's a toilet in the house now, but it's not in the bathroom. I will never understand how any healthy-minded person could ever install a toilet in a bathroom.
@MethDozer A toilet should be placed inside a small dedicated room. A bathroom should smell of roses and lavender and other fragrances and not of – you know what.
I grew up with one. I think we was the last one around to even get indoor plumbing ( a well with water cold water in the kitchen sink and finally an indoor toilet). I was in high school then.
I think the pots we had for when you could not make it to the little brown shack out back was more indignant.
A great songs says it all, little brown shack out back,
I’ve used them sure.. in the early 1960s they were still quite common and the main one I remember was one my Grandparents had although they had indoor plumbing by then. It was still in use by my Great Grandmother when she came to live there in a small trailer but I tried it myself a couple of times.
SW-User
I've never seen one that bad. When I was a kid, several of the older relatives still had outbuildings, complete with primitive bathroom (no running water), but those outbuildings (sheds) were all attached to the main house and barn -- so they were unheated, but under a roof, painted, and clean.
