Outhouses

By kiki

The shacks in the Simons Brickyard didn't have any indoor plumbing. Thus they all had outhouses. The people did have big backyards, and the outhouses sat on the furthest corner of the yard; they had to keep the smell away from the houses, lol!! The outhouses were simply constructed, with no double walls, just single wood panels. Outside, 2x4 were nailed horizontally to use as handles to pick up the outhouse whenever it had to be moved to a new hole.

What got me to write about outhouses was that I watched a movie where people had outhouses. It brought back memories of what we kid's used to do when an older person, like somebody's grandma or grandpa, would walk into the outhouses with yesterday's newspaper, no rolls of toilet paper back then. With so much time on our hands during the out-of-school summer months, 

we kids were always looking for something to amuse ourselves with, so sometimes we would hang out at somebody's house, and we would wait for that moment when an elderly person would limp into the outhouses. We would give them enough time to settle in comfortably; after a few minutes, we would sneak up to the outhouses and grab the handles, and rock the outhouse back and forth; sometimes, if there were enough of us kids, we would pick the outhouse off of the ground a few inches. When the grandma or grandpa would start yelling "cabrones," we would run like hell; by the time the old folks had their chonies back up, we were long gone…Notice that we just picked on old people? The reason for that was that they would never catch us if they were to chase us, whereas a younger person would catch us and beat the crap out of us!... The summer months were full of fun in that brickyard!!