I just read Rebecca's latest post, about outhouses being outlawed in Whitehorse, Yukon territory, in 1964. Both sets of my grandparents lived on farms, and had unused outhouses.
I spent two years at a mission in the Ontario bush. We had a rarely used outhouse. One year the plumbing in the building where the single female staff women lived froze up for several days; we had to use the outhouse in temperatures of 30F below zero. And I had the flu.
I am thankful for indoor plumbing.
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P.S. Last Sunday morning before the sermon, the minister prayed that those who were depressed, stress, or offended would be . . . . grateful.
All this outhouse talk made me think of Aunt Katie, who was not really my aunt, but some other distant relation. She was in her 90's when we used to visit her in the 1960's, and she lived on the grounds of the Mt. Carmel orphanage in Illinois with her two daughters, who still worked there (Aunt Katie was retired from there), and she had an indoor outhouse. It was a little shed roofed addition to her cottage-like house, but you entered from inside the house. As a child, THAT's what impressed me about visiting Aunt Katie--her indoor outhouse.
ReplyDeleteThat is interesting, how accommodation was made for age and weather.
ReplyDeleteI think the indoor bathrooms in both my grandparents' houses were actually parts of additions built on the outer shell of the house, later on.
I'm impressed by that long-term family commitment to the orphanage---how great that was for those children to have continuity of relationships with the adults.
A major problem with having non-family caregivers for those with special needs is the high staff turnover.