The Tale of the Outhouse

"An outhouse should always be far enough away so you don't smell it during the summer, but close enough to where you won't freeze trying to get to and from it during the winter."

My mother was born in green country in 1965. There were 11 kids. 5 boys, 6 girls. My mother was the baby. My grandfather was a construction worker and my grandmother was a home maker. Grandmother made their clothes, she grew a garden and canned food, and she was a volunteer teacher after she retired from teaching. They lived 30 minutes out of town in the middle of nowhere on over 15 acres. There is a creek that runs through the property where the kids would spend their summers. I have also spent my summers there. Great times have been spent on my grandparents property over the years.

The summer of 1974 was a hot and humid summer. My mother was 9 years old and her cousin, Brook, was 7. They had been swimming at the creek most of the afternoon. When it was time to up to the house, they saw some of the other kids watching Grandmother. She was shoving sticks, trash, paper, anything she could find into the outhouse all while mumbling under her breath. Something about Joe (my grandfather) never getting around to her bathroom. Apparently she was going to give him an opportunity to get around to it. They joined the crowd to watch the show. After struggling to shove everything in the outhouse, she poured kerosene, diesel, and gasoline on the stuff and around the house and then she poured a trail to the water house (where the water pump was stored) a few feet away. She got behind the water house & lit a match. The kids scrambled to hide as well.

My mother described the fallout: "All we heard was BOOM!" (imitates explosion). "Then little pieces of debris swirled in the air all around us and some chucks of sticks flew around as well. All I heard then was hysterical laughter coming from Mom. Us kids were just dumbfounded. All that was left was a pile of rumble. Later on, when Daddy came home, he went to use the outhouse, and none of us kids dared to say anything. He came back into the house and asked what the hell had happened. Mom sat there as calm as she could be and told him she thought it was about for a bathroom. I will never forget the look on Daddy's face as he stood there trying to comprehend what Mom had done."

He got around to Grandmother's bathroom later that summer.