A Funky Twist to American Nostalgia Wave: Outhouses Are In

It reeked.

It was sweaty in the summer. Goose-bump cold in the winter. Dark pretty much all year round. You’d walk in and a mouse might skitter past your toes. Or you’d feel a sticky tickle on your forehead and reach up to find a cobweb tangled in your hair.

It was cramped and it was rickety.

To repeat: It stunk.

Yet somehow, the vanishing American outhouse has become an object of nostalgia.

Not just fleeting, ah-when-life-was-simple nostalgia.

We’re talking genuine privy passion.

All across the country, fans of hole-in-the-ground plumbing are toiling to preserve old outhouses before they crumble. They’re photographing latrines as architectural treasures. And they’re collecting all sorts of memorabilia commemorating the little lean-to out back, from worn wooden seats to antique postcards to mini outhouses carved from pecan shells.

These days, there are outhouse races--”Gentlemen, start your toilets!”--featuring crews dragging full-size loos. There’s a quarterly outhouse newsletter too, packed with bad puns and odes to the john.

“People are really catching wind” of the joy of outhouse preservation, said Connie Denault--pun not intended, but when realized, acknowledged with a delighted cackle. “It’s really catching on.”

Denault, who edits the newsletter from her Illinois home, boasts a collection of 700-plus privy knickknacks--most of which she just donated to a Nova Scotia museum dedicated to the backyard bathroom. “It’s a subject people can have fun with,” she said.

Not just clean fun, either.

If you want the inside dirt on the outhouse of yesteryear--also known as the easer, the auntie, the castle, the biffy, the dooley or the vault--you can join a select cadre of privy diggers who paw through century-old toilet pits as a hobby. (The smell, they insist, is long gone, and the pits often contain tossed-away treasures like antique bottles or broken toys.)

And if pondering old potties isn’t enough, you can buy a modern outhouse--more formally called a composting toilet--which will collect all your waste in a polyethylene tank and turn it into fertilizer ready for the garden, although not recommended for food crops.

“In the old days, the outhouse was just a hole to poop in,” said Charles M. Cook, a Louisiana privy digger who admits he’s obsessed with scavenging old toilet pits. “It’s sure come a long way from there.”

Indeed, the lowly outhouse--once a place you went only when you really had to go--has become a bit of a status symbol in some parts. Cook boasts of his collection of outhouse holes. (That’s the piece of wood that got sawed out and dropped into the pit when the builder was shaping the seat.) And one fan from Pennsylvania has proudly suggested forming a national association of loo lovers--to be called AA POOP (American Assn. for the Preservation of Outhouses and Privies).

The pit toilet has even become the subject of a museum exhibit here in central Kansas.

It’s a small exhibit, to be sure, just a collection of photos tacked up along the hallway leading to the restrooms at the Reno County Museum. But it’s drawn tremendous response from around the country and even from Canada. Outhouse fans have sent in needlepoint renditions of their old latrines, along with photos of tumble-down privies they’ve restored with fresh paint and flower boxes. Kids have lingered to gawk in wonder (“It’s like Mars to them,” museum director Jay Smith said). A local businessman was even moved to confess that he was the one who used to parade the high school principal’s outhouse down Main Street so many years ago.

“There’s really a lot of terrific Americana involved with this subject,” Smith said.

That’s the fun thing about outhouses: Everyone who used one has a story.

There are the inevitable tales of Grandpa somehow--no one wanted to ask--dropping his false teeth down the hole.

Or about ardent young couples, desperate to escape Ma’s chaperoning in the parlor, sneaking off to the outhouse for a little steamy privacy.

There are stories of kids hiding out in latrines to avoid doing dishes after dinner. (Who, after all, would volunteer to go fetch them?) Of Halloween pranksters who overturned outhouses all over town--preferably when they were occupied. And there are memories galore of spiders and snakes and unknown creepy-crawlies spooking those trying to relieve themselves in peace.

“I tell you, there’s no end to what’s happened in outhouses,” said Ronald Barlow, author of “The Vanishing American Outhouse.”

But aficionados insist there’s more to outhouse nostalgia than good stories.

They see the old privies as an important part of American history, as worthy of preservation as log cabins or Model Ts. Even more worthy, perhaps, because for a good many decades outhouses represented the one thing that rich and poor had in common.

The wealthy might gussy up their potties with cupolas and fireplaces, with mahogany doors and stained-glass windows. But no matter how pretty, an outhouse was still an outhouse. The fanciest double-decker, six-seater privy served just the same function as the rundown shack with tar-paper roof and an old Sears Roebuck catalog for toilet paper. The museum exhibit here says it best: It pronounces the outhouse “the seat of Democracy.”

A social equalizer of sorts, the privy was also a catalyst for economic recovery. During the Great Depression, jobless men got work--and wages--building 2.3 million outhouses for the Works Progress Administration.

Despite this rich history, however, most folks saw little point in preserving their latrines when they could move on to something better. Even the wooden privy on the White House lawn was demolished--by none other than Thomas Jefferson. (Jefferson instead installed two indoor water closets, which preserved presidential dignity but created a sanitation problem by pumping waste into a canal behind the White House.)

But about 50 million American families still relied on outhouses as late as 1950. As indoor plumbing took hold in all but the poorest, most remote communities, privies began to disappear--and fast.

“Outhouses were falling down, being carted to landfills, being tossed in bonfires at pep rallies. We were losing them,” recalled Dottie Booth, a Pennsylvania grandmother.

Determined to save history so her grandkids could learn a bit about life before flushing, Booth set out in 1988 to photograph every latrine she could find. She soon discovered, to her astonishment, that people would pay her for postcards and posters of the potties. Sensing a big nostalgia market, Booth branched into outhouse T-shirts, jigsaw puzzles, coasters, Christmas ornaments. She even wrote a book, “Nature Calls: The History, Lore and Charm of Outhouses.” It’s now in its third printing.

Other merchants too have seen profits in privies since the preservation movement began in earnest a decade ago. At the Outhouse Store in Lancaster, Pa., for instance, owner Peter Roberts sells full-size reproductions of old biffies for $395. Buyers use them, he says, as pantries.

“This whole country loves to glorify anything that’s vanishing,” Roberts said. “And outhouses are certainly vanishing.”

Indeed, many states have banned the construction of pit toilets, fearing the waste might contaminate ground water. The composting models are permitted, but, although they’ve been installed to great acclaim in several national parks, they have not proved popular among homeowners. In part, that’s because they’re expensive and bulky and require regular tending.

There’s also this undeniable fact: Outhouses are most fun in fond recollection. Using one day in and day out just doesn’t have much appeal.

Even if it is guaranteed odor-free.

“People don’t want to deal with that type of organic material in any way, shape or form,” said Joseph Jenkins, author of “The Humanure Handbook” and a big advocate of recycling human waste instead of sending it to the sewer.

He sighed, then spoke the truth, although it disappoints him greatly: “People like their flush toilets.”