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BACKYARD HOUSES

One vital necessity in days gone by was "the little house back of the big house". I used to marvel at the elegance of some of these old buildings. We had a small back yard and I guess that called for a small outhouse. Just a plain one-holer, nothing extravagant. Our next door neighbor had a castle. The old gentleman was a retired carpenter and there was nothing plain about his out-house. It was an elegant three holer. The holes were moon shaped, tapered and buffered, not just a plain old circle like ours. The door was louvered, and closed tightly. He even had a "plank walk" leading to the building. We had to walk through the grass.

His granddaughters used to entertain their friends in that place. They would go in there and stay and talk. I often threw rocks at the building to rile them up. Each year my dad would buy a half ton of coal. There was always a pile of coal in the back yard. My favorite playground was on top of that pile of coal. It took about five minutes to get as dirty as you could possibly get. My mom would put me into a wash tub in the back yard to wash the dirt off me. One of my aunts visited us regularly. She was a sedate and prim lady. I remember the day she went by me while I was playing on top of that pile of coal. She was on her way to that outside commode and stopped only long enough to throw a few choice words at me about how dirty I was. Last I saw of her she was singing one of Paul Whiteman's latest hit songs and was closing the door on that old toilet. About ten seconds later, I heard a blood curdling yell and all hell had broken out in the outhouse. The door flew open and my aunt fell face down in the mud, her dress up around her neck and her bloomers around her ankles. She kept hollering "Snake! Snake!". A snake had curled up on the seat of the commode. She did not see it until she had taken all the necessary steps to sit. It was then that she spotted the snake and that toilet was not big enough for the two of them. She tried to run, open the door and holler all at once. She just couldn't run with her bloomers around her ankles. She fell through the door, almost knocking it off the hinges. She created such a furor that all the neighbors came running out. When she gathered herself together, she was dirtier than I was. I never could understand why my mama did not throw her into that wash tub and use Octagon soap on her.

Using one of those toilets in wintertime tested your nerve. On mornings when the temperature was below freezing, it took all the nerve you could muster up to go our there. I usually broke a big icicle off the bottom of the cistern and ate it on my way to the outhouse. There was one near catastrophe involving an out-house. One cold winter day a father decided he would cover the seat of the toilet with paper and rags. He thought that by doing this the seat would be nice and warm in the morning when the kids went out to use it. The daddy was always the first one up and the first to use the outhouse. That cold day, he followed his usual routine. The TIMES PICAYUNE in hand, he headed for the out-house. He removed the covering he had put down, sat and lit up his first cigarette of the day. The toilet blew up, the four walls blew away. Luckily, he was not hurt. Gases had built up when he covered the hold and could not escape. When he lit his cigarette the toilet disintegrated. I miss a lot of things from the "good OLE days". I don't miss those out-houses at all.

by Leonce Haydel from STORIES FROM THE RIVER ROAD

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