The Time Capsule | Roy Marshall
Our May 29 Time Capsule began with the one-square bathroom visit advocated by some of today’s environmentalists and ended in yesterday’s fragrant realm of two and three-hole outhouses.
Einer A., an old friend who calls me on picky things, said seeing that at the top of the editorial page was like stepping into a home and finding a porcelain throne in the kitchen.
He’s right I suppose, and it seems to me the page has been a brick short since our editor left. That was three or four months ago and I’ve no idea what the owners are doing about a replacement. Hopefully they’ll get a good one soon.
What Einer really called for was to relate his favorite outhouse story. It involves his Aunt Freka, who paid a Christmas visit. Freka, a city dweller from Milwaukee, had never before found it necessary to light a lantern and follow that long and lonely path through the snow.
The story is a good one, Einer swears it’s true, and the punchline is Freka’s reaction when she arrived to find the outhouse occupied by a surly raccoon. What she did then makes the story, but even without an editor I doubt we could get it printed.
The outhouse column, which ended with FiFi, my sister’s kitten, in the murky depths, stirred memories with several readers.
One remembered her mother buying peaches by the lug. Each peach was wrapped in a square of tissue that was oh-so-much-gentler than a page of Sears & Roebuck. She and her sister smoothed each square and put them on an outhouse nail. Precious treasures, their rationing was a one-square movement before its time.
Another reader told of the day his younger brother got stuck. The little guy, maybe two years old, was learning the potty routine. He went by himself, dozed off, and awakened abruptly to find he was jackknifed in a frightful position. When calls for help were answered he was found with his head and legs protruding, chin between his knees, arms and feet outstretched to keep him topside. He was physically unharmed, but probably went through life with a phobia of some sort.
The FiFi ordeal took place when I was about eleven, Rita three, the cat maybe four or five months. Rita came running, pointing, shouting the word “Voosious.” (Our outhouse was called Mt. Vesuvius and Rita hadn’t mastered the pronunciation.)
FiFi, in an awful mess, was four or five feet down standing on what I think was either a discarded overshoe or part of an inner tube. (Outhouses were a convenient place to throw broken bottles, bent nails, bad report cards, etc.) Rita, calling kitty and watching through one hole as I lowered a rope, blocked the light and scared the cat. Cat ignored the rope. I got a 2x4, but it was too long. I could get it into the privy, but the roof wasn’t high enough to put it where it needed to be. I sent Rita after a saw. She came back with a hatchet. I got the saw, made the cut, lowered the board and, after a few minutes, out came the cat.
The rescue didn’t compare to carrying half-naked and passionately grateful young women from burning buildings, but it was something.
Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.