h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sa-lute!

Well, one story one's anyway.

I also remember going to a every small school for my early education. A two room school-house, grades 1-8. We had two outhouses,two two-hole outhouses. One for the boys, and one for the girls. The year? 1964.

Wildcat58


PS. We had an outhouse at home back then, too.

I remember outhouses from the sixties, too. Some of my relatives were Tennessee hillbillies, others lived in the Mississippi Delta. Never saw a double-decker one, though - must be a Yankee invention.

As children, we were afraid of the outhouses, because sometimes you got unwelcome visitors, like spiders. It makes you cautious.

The entry is just great! There needs to be another one on outhouse reading matter, though - what about Sears and Roebuck catalogs?

It wasn't so much the spiders I was afraid of, it is the snakes. Oh, and furry critters. I always hated going out there at night.

I never saw a two-story one either, don't know that I would want to USE one.

We always had TP at home. For school, mom always made sure I carried tissues, because the school couldn't keep TP.

Yep, always heard the catalog jokes. I don't know that much about reading matter, I was just learned to read when we moved to a new house and a new school. I do know in the winter nobody would have taken a book with them, it was just to dang cold! There's nothing quite like a cold draft and the threat of frost bite to make you want to take care of all your business in a hurry.

Can you imagine how cold the two-story ones were that could only be used when there was 30 ft of snow? (Brr.)

30 ft of snow remind me of dachas and log huts

I thought it was bad in East Tennessee when I was a kid and the snow was knee deep (to me). I can't imagine it being 30 feet deep. Here in the Tennessee Valley we rarely get snow anymore.

I think this past winter I saw maybe a quarter of an inch (5-7mm) total on my back deck. That only lasted a few hours.

Up in the mountains, they get more, and were we lived when I was a little girl, they get more snow too. But still not nearly as much as we did back in the '60's.

30 feet of snow, I'm sure the old chamber pots were used a lot in those days too. Pity the poor soul who had to empty them.

I remember being up in Lost Creek, TN, one winter as a child. No snow, but it sure was cold, except around my grandfather's woodstove.

We lived in Memphis. I was 11 before I ever saw snow.

Then we moved to Chicago, and got a bait of it.

We had an intersting one in our vacation house in Sweden, it had real toilet seats and was a three-holer!

Aha! The outhouse story goes international!

It's not like we never had them here... In a lot of old European cities the structures that jut out over the river and in many cases have been turned into balconies or bay windows were in fact privies...

Not to mention castles!

Yes, they usually had one over the moat... And isn't a port-a-potty or whatever you'd call those strange blue things used at festivals and construction sites basically an outhouse?

Yes - though only one-storey, usually. And what about the elaborate ones I've heard about in Paris?

Haven't been to Paris except the airport

Nor have I. But I heard somewhere that they had elaborate ones that were dangerous because of the self-cleaning mechanisms.

Oh, self cleaning mechanisms are widely used. Is there any special danger? Do you mean the ones that wash the whole cabin? There are some public ones in France that are coin-operated. They play music at you, when it stops you have about 30 seconds until the door automatically opens...

You're kidding! So you have to be fast??? Outrageous!

I heard they were dangerous if you were caught inside when they were self-cleaning, because of the chemicals. But maybe they fixed that.

The time is reasonable, but it's supposed to prevent them from being used for other purposes, like doing drugs or making babies...

I refuse to make the obvious comment on that one...

I don't quite follow...