An Outhouse Is Still An Outhouse

Growing up in Beckley and Mabscott in the 1960's as a little girl, not everbody had indoor plumbing. There was the building that sat somewhere in the back yard that was called an outhouse. It had on the door a cut-out shaped like a crescent moon.  When I was in the first grade at Mabscott, it was a two room school. There were outhouses there, one for the boys and one for the girls.  We used to joke about the more well-to-do people had a two-holer and the regular people had a one-holer.

If anyone has been around an outhouse, it has a distinctive smell.  You know what it is, no one has to explain what it is for. Sometimes it would have to be reset on another hole and the waste buried. At Halloween, pranksters used to tip it over. Now if the person knew that a prankster was coming, they would move it off of the foundation and if you would sneak in the dark you got a pleasant surprise, you would fall in the hole.

The thing about an outhouse, it is still an outhouse no matter how pretty it is painted or decorated around it. It is still an outhouse. When you open the door it still smells. You don't have to tell people what it is, what it's used for, you know by the smell.  You get that same feeling when going into a place, they can paint it and redecorate it, but the foul spirit still remains....