Outhouse etiquette, training and rules that can save you.

Going from no outhouse at the hunting camp with no trailer to sleep in the first year in November. To the new privy and a woodstove heated trailer we hit the big time of hunting camps the very next year. The hunting camp became a vacation spot too. The kids loved it. As we put out the lights one night the coyote started howling. The kids in harmony said WHATS THAT?
I said it's a pack of coyote hunting. Does anyone want to use the privy now? Everyone said it could wait till morning......
It was awesome to hear the bears hoot to each other because they can't call 1-800-COLLECT.

I own a piece of heaven in the green mountains of vt.
 
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Outhouses are still pretty common.

I run my dog at a nearby 'dog park' almost daily. 30 years ago, we trained bird dogs there: I'd take pigeons there, plant them for the dog and shoot them. Today, the clientele is mostly the well off suburbanites taking rover for a walk. If I tried to plant and shoot birds now, I'd end up lynched.

To this day, however, the 'facilities' are concrete block outhouses: one for guys, one not.

This morning, I saw a well dressed woman in some personal distress: she needed to go.

She went into the outhouse with some urgency but reappeared in a few seconds with a look of disgust and rushed to her car as quickly as she could while still holding it.

Last I saw of her was the dust cloud behind her Range Rover.

Hope she got home in time to keep that nice car clean.
 
Kinda not too far OT... Back in 1986 we were on a jeep ride in central Colorado. I'm guessing the leader only had that name because he was in front. It'd be giving him way too much credit to think he knew were we were going. But we took the old road north out of Monarch Pass. I was cheating and tracking our progress on a topo map. So we drove into the worldly remains of a town known as North Star. It had the misfortune to have been bought up by some rich Texan. About half the town was flattened. It was once a rich mining area but now is a super fund site as I understand it. Well, the next town north is anyway. But standing there, right behind one of the few semi-standing building was a 2 story outhouse. Genuine. We'd always heard of them, where the boss uses the 2nd story and the workers the first floor. Not this beauty, the 2nd floor was the one with the door and steps kinda leading up to it. The first floor was just siding.

I knew instantly what it was, but the CB was alive with the discussion. If you don't understand tall mountains, you'd not be familiar with deep snow. There'd be no way in the world to use a ground floor facility with 10 or 15 feet of snow. But you could try to beat down enough snow to climb aboard the stairs and get to the upstairs door. Bet that thing would be cold about mid-winter. To me it was a thing of beauty. I've even googled 2 story outhouse a few times.

Worse than all this, you can't get to it these days. The road out of White Pine still runs through the big abandoned gold mine, but that darn Texan has a locked gate put up on the road before you get very far. I'm trying to remember the name of the mine, I think it might be the Akron.

A bit farther east there's the Mary Murphy mine. The forest service (not worth capital letters) has done some restoration on the mine dump. Covered it with soil to try to reduce runoff. Those mines leach as much lead as other stuff. But just down hill from the remains of the tipple building they had a 2 holer. Last summer some guys (regular guys, not gummint) were doing some restoration on the building. They'd been scavenging boards and were trying to put it mostly back together. Hope they don't padlock it.
 
This one is a few miles outside of Boulder,CO.Mr.Burg is right,we still have lots of em,beats making like a bear [emoji1]
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One of my first experiences with them was at Boy Scout Camp. It wasn't the fancy kind with concrete. One of out troop came flying out there one day, right after a tarantula crawled out between his legs. I still thank God that didn't happen to me.
 
In the 70's used to hunt at a ranch near Tilden, TX. Old bunkhouse was for sleeping, cooking and eating, plus card games at night. The outhouse was a telephone booth with the bifold door. At night it was interesting to sit and watch the wildlife walk by. The rancher took his wife and daughters only on private hunts, to minimize issues. Often wondered why the glass wasn't painted at strategic areas?
Only issue with wildlife, was opening up a high blind that the previous user had failed to close-up and an owl would be in there, and you discovered it before the sun came up! Or walking to the blind in the dark after being dropped off, and coming across a bunch of javelina while walking down a narrow trail through chest high brush!
 
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My grandparents house in SE Missouri didn't get indoor plumbing until I was about 5 or 6 or so - which would have been 1967 or 1968. My dad did most of the installation. I can still remember having to use the privvie.

It stayed right there in the cow pasture just on the other side of the backyard fence until I was a teenager. Guess it was kind of a backup option. When it got so rickety that it was going to need major repair, Grandpa finally tore it down and hauled it off.

I never had to use corncobs, but my dad talked about having to use them when he was a kid. Ever heard the expression "rougher than a cob"? Guess where it came from?
 
We have a large Amish population in a adjoining county.A police officer that worked in their area told a story of being invited to noon dinner.They were eating at a table outside and being on a farm flies were buzzing around and landing on the plates as they were being passed.The trooper noticed quite a few of the flies were white .He asked the Amish farmer about the white flies and the farmer said oh we just limed the outhouse as he waved some flies of the chicken platter.
 
We went on a 2 week vacation last summer, we spent 4 o 5 day in Jackson Hole. It took about 2 hours to catch all the art studios and we went exploring. We were sorry we did not take the 4 WD Super Duty. She held her breath as I took her Mazda off road and then had to back out.

We took an evening tour to see the Moose, ELk, deer, bear, and everything that crawls or flies there. Saw everything but bear and saw a Griz later when leaving Yellowstone just before east gate.

After the tour we went exploring on our own, we were out in the boonies, way out, we started seeing Vans and Suburbans with names on the side like Griz adventure or Griz tours. This is not where they took us in the topless GMC 3/4 ton moose search. We had found the big boys tour land.

We drove every road, glassed every creek draw, worked hard at it and did not see one bear. We end up close to a lake, there was an outhouse, fancy concrete block, I'm older, on diuretics, it's been 3 hours, I'm gonna have to use it as there are cars and Grizzlys are us tours going by. There are trees all around, nice and shady, in the shade are 12,000 buffalo, the herd bull is close to the outhouse, I turn around and back up the path to keep the car between us, I jump out and run for the door.

There are 12 million mosquito's in my path and several million more inside. I was bitten in places that, never mind.

I ran back out and offered to turn the car around for my wife, she saw the horde of mosquito's attack me and said she'll wait until a gas station. I said there aren't any.

So in serious griz country bring your OFF for the skeeters and track shoes for the buffalo run.
 
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My grandparents lived in South Dakota, in town, and used the out house till they died.It was a 2 holer. I used it too. They had running water in the house but no stool.
If the outhouse is a 2 holer, you just got to learn to be sociable.
 
l remeber one particular trip to China vividly not too
many years ago.. We were visiting a High School when Nature called... Walked behind a wall and spied a simple brick trench the width of a t blade shovel...Not sitten here. All squat and drop..And its ''Bring Your 0wn Paper'' in rural China
 
The elders at the family gatherings would talk about using the Sears and Montgomery ward catalogs for toilet paper one page at a time.
 
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