My grandfather had a two-holer outhouse behind his garage in Reno County, Kansas, until the 1960s. Even though he had put in a bathroom when they moved in in 1945, he still used the privy when coming in from the fields, as he didn't want to get the bathroom dirty. There was also a sink for washing on the back porch, for the same reason. In 1960-61, my father tore down and remodeled our house in Reno County. We had no bathroom for 3 or 4 months. They had an outhouse out in a row of trees that had been dragged out there when they put in plumbing after the war. My mother went out there, swept out the dirt and wasps' nests, and hung a roll of toilet paper in it. We used it until my father rebuilt the house. God, was it cold and dark in the winter.

While on an antiquing trip I drove past an Amish school in upstate New York last month. There were two outhouses, albeit with good Amish carpentry, outside.

December? Wow, imagine how cold they must have been.

It's not a true outhouse if (1) it has a toilet more elaborate than a hole in a rough plank, (2) the deposits go into anything but a pit filled with many years' accumulation of similar contributions, (3) the aroma of same doesn't set fire to your nasal hairs, and (4) there isn't a huge, active wasp nest in the eaves. (Corncob/catalogue TP is also implied).

These seem to me to be akin to the 'Loos in the Garden characteristic of old British council and workers' housing: uncomfortable, perhaps, but a real leg (or butt) up for their users.

Walking to School in the snow, uphill, then having to face this.

I think the locked doors are the executive washrooms.

I'll go behind a tree, thank you.

Whenever I wonder how much better life must have been in the old days I always get back to thinking about how miserable the bathroom situation must have been back then.

At the Shrewsbury Elem. School (southern York County, Pa.), we still had outhouses in 1st & 2nd grade, 1953-54.The summer between 2nd&3rd grades, we got a modern addition that included a cafeteria and indoor flushing toilets....just hated those outhouses!