In 1935, Northern Tissue advertised "splinter-free" toilet paper. Yep, you read that right; early paper production techniques sometimes left splinters embedded in the paper. And you thought you had it tough!
Sears and Monkey Wards catalogs back then had fewer splinters...
We had a 2 holer. Never was in there with somebody. Had the catalogs to take care of business and the walls were covered with calendars
I remember mostly spider webs, mud daubers and dreadful darkness late at night.
Don't forget about the unbearable cold in the winter months.
I don't want to go back to those days. I'll drive a Model T, but I'm not going back to the outhouse unless that's all there is. I guess it beats going to the bushes.
We still have a one holer that comes in handy when the power is off or the drain field is water logged, but we do use the same paper as we have in the house. There is a big stick inside the door to knock the black widow webs out of the hole before you sit, this is more important for the men than it is for the women.
Going to swap meets and using those Porta Johns bring back (BAD) old memories. LOL
My grandmother ran a rooming house. On a hook next to the toilet was a phone book or a catalog. If the roomers wanted toilet paper, they brought their own.
Norm
Those Porta Jon are hot and stinky. At least, back then, we had lime to kill the smell.
Outhouses and slivers in the TP weren't the only difficulties of the day. My mother's family lived on a ranch in Evergreen (an area just south of San Jose, CA) until 1946. In order to take a bath they had to heat the water on a wood stove, then put it into the galvanized tub. Of course use of the wood stove was conditioned on having wood ready that you had cut and split. When you were done with your bath (in the kitchen as there was no bathroom) you had to bail out the tub and dump the water outside (no drains).
No telephone.
No electricity.
One weekly chore was to clean the soot of the kerosene lamp chimneys.
And so on....
No time for texting, Facebook radio, TV or any of those type of things. If you weren't working and/or doing chores you were probably sleeping so you could do it again the next day.
On the subject of paper: I recently began to read a book called What We Leave Behind. Quickly became apparent that the author thought if he was the only one left on earth the world would be a better place. Start of chapter 2 and he's complaining about how toilet paper doesn't disentigrate as fast as the waste he's leaving in the woods behind his house. Apparently even an out house isn't green enough for this nut. Close book, end of read. Good night.
Charlie, that TP may be treated like most paper, so it won't burn, which would delay decay, too.
In the interest of science, I just rolled a piece of tp and lit it with a fire starter, holding it out the upstairs window. It burned good, so there is another reason for its slow decay.
The guy needs something that's pre-digested, I guess.
I'm way too young to live in that era but my grandmother (who past way last Feb at 102) would tell me stories about her up bringing in rural Nebraska.
Life was not easy at all I'm surprised she made it to 102.
All boat owners know that marine stores sell toilet paper that is specifically designed to disintegrate when it hits water. It can't last as long in the woods as this guy's waste. I suspect that outdoor stores sell the same thing. What's he got to gripe about?? Does it cost a bit more? Does he really care, or is he trying to sell books?
My grandmother moved from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah to San Pedro, California when my mother died in June 1950. She moved from the home where my dad was born in 1896 on J Street up by the State Capitol on the "bench".
She had no electricity but had running water. Her outhouse had a flush toilet in it and it was out in the front yard. It would freeze in the winter and in 1949 she had six feet of snow. She had no toilet tank but simply turned the hose into the bowl and it would flush. That way the tank didn't crack when frozen. She put kerosene in the bowl to stop it from icing over.
Yes she had toilet paper.
She used her coal stove to cook on and when she came to live with us she stuck her hand into the oven to see how hot it was because she didn't know cooking temperatures by the numbers.
She would render out fat and it it tasted good she cooked with it. If it was bitter or sour we made soap with it. She was a good teacher.
My dad had a horse named Babe and it would come into the kitchen to beg treats. My grand dad ran a wholesale grocery and sold to hotels, hospitals and mom and pop stores. So they had lots of apples and carrots around that Babe loved.
My grandmother used to bake a set of bread and that was usually about ten loaves. Babe snuck in and ate that set of bread. Babe started to swell up as the yeast started working and my grand mother ran to the vet to ask what to do. The vet said, "You will just have to wait". ;^}
The guy next door is stationed in Kuwait again. He was telling me that in Kuwait people do not use toilet paper so our military guys need to make sure if they go to town that they carry some with them. Something about not shaking hands was in the conversation also. I am still imagining what they use.
my friend still uses an outhouse as his only privy. works just fine, id much rather go in it than a porta potty.
in his you can swing the door open and have a nice view of the mountain side.
the thing you have to beware of is when it starts getting full. there tends to be a splash.........
The door should swing in so you can hold it shut with your foot.
Been there & done that!
At my aunt and uncle's house, where I spent a good portion of WWII, they carried their water from the well. They had electricity for lighting only. Their allotment was 300W. If you exceeded that, it would all go dark until you reduced the load so naturally all the cooking and heating was by the old wood stove.
The two holer around the corner of the barn was a serene place, where in the summer it was nice to sit with the door open and contemplate. In the winter it was a different story. It was a great upgrade when they had a regular toilet seat and a roll of TP hanging on a peg inside the house for you to grab on your way out.
After WWII I spent summers at my grandparent's farm. No electricity there until 1961, and the only way to get there was by boat, unless you wanted a one day+ hike through the mountains. As they did not have a dock, the kids would be on a schedule of two weeks at school and one week at home. They could not deliver milk to the dairy daily, so they churned butter and delivered that. I would often wake up in the morning to the sound of the separator, and if I was up early enough, I got to help cranking it. How many kids today have even heard of a separator?
One of my cousins, 11 years older than me to the day, once, when about 4 years old, was sent to the outhouse to throw away some rhubarb leaves. She didn't just "throw" them in the hole. She decided it was "ugly" down there, so she wanted to arrange the leaves neatly to cover the "ugliness". However, to do that she leaned a little too far and fell in! Her older sister hauled her out and directly down to the creek and cleaned her up.
They had a water powered saw mill, but I found a T engine in an old shed, but I do not know what it was used or intended for, and right now I don't have the number at hand.
Thread drift alert!
I had to look it up to be sure (been more than thirty years since I heard it). Frank Crumit recorded a song called "I'm a Specialist" about a contractor who builds only outhouses. It is quite charming.
He asks questions about how and where you want your outhouse. One of the questions is "Do you want the door-a-swingin' out? Or a-swingin' in?"
Frank's comment reminded me.
Actually, I've been thinking about building an outhouse. Don't ask why.
I remember my paternal great grandmother from when I was little. She always cooked on a coal stove. As she got older, a unit was built behind my great uncles home for her to live in. They had to move her old stove into it because she refused to try anything new.
Drive carefully, and enjoy, W2
Like Mr. Roar Sand, "Been there and done that". I was raised by both sets of Grandparents, both lived way back in the middle of nowhere, and I would go back to it in a heartbeat. Daddy's folks never had electricity, indoor plumbing or a telephone, Mama's folks got electricity after the War, one water faucet (in the kitchen) about then, had a crank phone that none of the adults could use, so the younger folks did it for them, like our Grandkids do now to program our electronics for us. We always had two holers, and at our one room School houses the two holers were used by boys and girls. Catalogs and magazines were mostly used, I don't really remember TP much till I went in the Service. We used corn cobs at the Barn, and Spanish Moss when we could get it, so there have been a lot of changes. In my working career, I was around a lot of the Kuwatis and their brethern, and yes, the left hand was considered "unclean" because yes, it was used for wiping their butts. There was no extra water for most of these people, so they did with what they had. I could go on for days about the toilets in most of the foreign countries, they may be better now, but I wouldn't bet on it, most have exactly what we had growing up when going in the woods, and they are "squat" toilets, just a hole in the floor, so some places have not progressed much from what we had when I was growing up or the old "slit latrines". TP was so uncommon overseas that you didn't expect it, best to carry the small Kleenex packs. If you do find some furnished, think wax paper. One of the female Engineers at a company I was with refused anymore overseas work because of the toilet facilities. What was really bad was the foreign Engineers that would rotate into our Houston office, they would use our toilets as a squat toilet, and there you are with a muddy shoeprint where you want to sit, just their culture and they never seemed to grow out of it. Bathing is not much better, Lima had specific times for water, you best be ready to get in the shower at the right time. A lot of that stuff never bothered me because of the way and times in which I was raised. We bathed one after the other, just poured a bucket of hot water in between occupants, there weren't any females to worry about, Grandma's would have the house to themselves when they bathed, we would be sent off somewhere and told not to come back. We also bathed in the dirt "tanks" or ponds that most people had, this happened in the Spring and Summer. I have bathed in a horse trough, even though it was forbidden, you just splashed the soapy water out when finished. They say we only remember the good stuff, and I guess that is true for me, I really have a lot of good memories of the times back then, and like I said, I would go back without any problem. I tell my family about this picture, when we got older and taller, we just bathed one part at a time.
It's been on tv this year that something like 60% of the people in the world don't have toilets or toilet facilities.
Ralph,
I bet that 60% are also mostly the people who don't have clean drinking water either. What's interesting about this, I think, is the fact that here in rural America of years past we just had outhouses, but everything worked pretty well. A large part of that 60% you're talking about are not just without a toilet, there are no sanitation systems at all in some of the heavily populated areas, creating some really bad health issues.
As hard as life was in rural America of yesteryear, it was not nearly as bad as it is for many even today. It's sad to say that just having clean water would be a big step in right direction for many people.
I'm 48. When I was 15, we visited some kinfolks in North Alabama. Poor as church mice. They were very proud of the fact they had finally gotten an electric well pump and now had running water in the kitchen. They had not yet built a bathroom and still used the outhouse. Their home was old, but clean. They just didn't have much money, had lived that way for decades, and it just didn't bother them to live that way.
I have a friend who is really into old machinery and such things. He has a large place and is always out working on something or another. He has a two holer out back and uses it regularly, as it is a long walk back to the house. When we are there, I use it myself. My wife has used it, but usually walks to the house for more modern conveniences.
My family moved around a bit during the 50's, as my Dad followed the post-war house-building work. Some of the places we lived had privies (usually 2-holers, although I never could understand why), and using them didn't bother me except in Michigan in the winter. It must have bothered my Mom as well, because Dad added on an indoor bathroom there.
In the early 70's, I left the city and moved "back to the land" to the woods here in NW Arkansas. There were lots of us Hippie-types doing that about that time, and we all built privies on our places. Mine was midway between the house and the barn. Even after getting running water and a "real" bathroom, I still used the privy most of the time. The paper was kept in a coffee can with a plastic lid. Ours didn't have a door, because there was no need for one. There was no one within miles except my wife and me. The view from there across the valley was wonderful, and even when we had company folks were courteous enough to look the other way if they passed by.
Now that I'm in town, the farm and privy are all things of the past, but they're fond memories. But most of my friends who still live out there in the woods still have privies.
My Aunt & Uncle, who lived on the Family Homestead in Oregon had running water in their kitchen. The nearby creek had a pipe that diverted the water through a trough in the kitchen! They were pretty proud of having a "Big City" convenience as "running water." We used to go visit a few weeks in the Summers, but stopped doing so when I was pretty young (maybe about 6 years old), so the memories are really foggy now!
T'
David D.
Mr. Puryear - you sure have interesting stories - and pictures. Thanks.
I keep saying I'm going to build an outhouse out of the old barn siding from my old barn that is long gone. Like old Henry Hook in Anderson, Indiana used to say, "there are some things you just don't do in the house".
Sounds like ol' Henry was a pretty smart fellow.
sounds like ol henry was a pretty fart smeller
Sometimes the younger generation just doesn't get it. Bro. Rich in Anacortes used to be an avid salmon fisherman, and he smoked most of it. His homemade smoker in a garbage can burned out, so he built a new one to look like a small outhouse.
The family threw a party for the new smoker, and ordered a cake with a model of it.
"We want a moon on the side."
"We can't do that. It's porn to have somebody mooning on the cake!"
Rich used to brag that a good part of the town ate out of his garbage can, then they changed to eating out of his outhouse...
I've shown this two story one before. It's at an old hotel in the state park in San Juan Batista, Calif.
Toilet paper, Hell what about Corn Cobs for those that couldn't afford Paper or Phone Books. Talk about Rough!
On the "farm", a family cabin up in the woods, you had to ponder just how bad you really had to go in the night, in winter, knowing there was about a 100 yard run to the privy and you felt you were in danger of being chased by a bear or cougar. If you waited long enough, you felt mean enough to handle any animal on the way out. Lite enough to outrun any animal on the way back. It wasn't just a little "me time" as much as it was an epic, heart pounding adventure.
Late in 1949, my folks left their home in England. It was built of brick and had all mod. cons. including television. We moved to Australia and ended up in a 3 room weatherboard shack, with outhouse (of course). That building was regularly painted with white-wash so was known as 'The White House'. My father built an out-building to serve as laundry and also put in a bath there. Unfortunately the two 1,000 gallon water tanks, filled by runoff from the roof, were insufficient for anything other than drinking water when summer came around, so on bath night the first job was to hitch our faithful horse to a sledge that carried a couple of 44 gallon drums. We would set off about a mile and a half to the disused quarry whereupon water was bucketed from the quarry into the drums. When we got home the water was bucketed from the drums to the copper, complete with tadpoles. When it was hot enough, the tadpole soup was bucketed from the copper into the bath. We took it turn about in the bath, just adding more hot water as needed. Next morning the cold bath water was carried by bucket to water the vegetable plants in the garden.
One of my earliest jobs was to cut up newspaper into squares to hang in the White House. Another chore was to collect fallen dry twigs to make 'stick bundles' for use as kindling for the wood-fired stove. As I grew older I would split the firewood, milk the cows, check fill and clean the kerosene lamps etc.
We bought a kerosene refrigerator in 1956, and that made life a bit easier.
There are many stories that I could relate, like ploughing and harrowing with the horse, but those days, although hard, have been an experience that I now enjoy thinking back upon. It gave me so much knowledge and experience that many youngsters of even the 1950's missed out on.
I know the old double decker outhouses were built offset & sometimes were built in snowy places for easy access even with lots of snow - but they're still fun
You think T times were bad....my mother was born in 1946. The house was two rooms, nine kids, plus two parents. 96 acres of prime mountain, moonshine still country. Cast iron cook stove (Victor Junior).
They had an outhouse. It was on the hill behind the wood shed. House had electricity, but that's pretty much it. Never had plumbing, except for a sink that was spring fed 24 hours a day (you could not shut it off. Modern sink.)
Grandmother had a modern washing machine later in life that she manually filled with water, ran to wash, and manually filled again to rinse. I'm talking the late 1970's early 1980's.
The outhouse was in use the entire time the family lived on the side of that mountain. I never used it, from the time I was a kid until adulthood. I was afraid of it.
A fabled trick on Holloween eve was for some lads to sneak up to a farmer's outhouse after dark and move it back a few feet. Or to tip it over on it's door with the user inside.
My 1873 farm house stll had the outhouse out back (gone, now) when we moved here 38 years ago. My question: the outhouse had THREE holes!Why would you need more then ONE? Maybe TWO if you took a kid with you. Seems like THREEHOLERS could be a social event......Paul
A practice I learned from my older relatives born around 1900 is keeping a paper grocery sack near the throne. Used paper is put in the sack, and not down the hole. If you have a septic tank this keeps it from filling with wood pulp. When you get a sackful you burn it.
The old outhouse here is in pretty sad shape, so a new one is on the agenda. There's only one bathroom in the house, so a spare will be handy for family reunions. Some of the youngsters will be afraid to use it, but it won't phase the old timers.
Most hunting camps I know about still have an outhouse out back. Some people run an electric line to them and hang a light bulb just above the seat to provide illumination and keep the seat warm. There is a hook on the wall to hold the light out of the way while in use.
Paul, one for the men folks, one for the women folks and one for the kids. The women's was usually smaller and was wasn't spattered with stray droplets like the men's was. The kids hole was little so they couldn't fall in.
When my stepfather's parents came out to Montana they lived in a sheepwagon for four years. The "Hoodie" as it was called, hung under the wagon when it was being moved and when they got to where camp was my grandfather would set it downwind from the wagon, turned away from the wagon so my grandmother would have a little privacy. It was basically a box turned upside down with a hole in it and a back about two feet high that she could throw her skirts up over when she sat down, which kept them clean and offered a bit more privacy. Being, "Caught with your pants down" used to be a pretty common expression here and could have a variety of meanings depending on what you had been doing when they were down.
Leave it to Stan Howe to come up with a sensible answer----I`ve been asking this question for many years--nobody had an answer. It makes sense now!!!! Thanks, Paul
Gee and all this time when I used a three hole out house I would put my to legs in the outer holes and sit over the middle one.
My wife was a nurse and one day she went into work and the other nurses on the early shift told her that the old lady in room 103 keeps wanting to see "Mrs. Jones" but we told her there is no one here by that name. Well my wife dropped what she was doing and ran into room 103 and helped the old woman to the restroom. As she was assisting her the old woman looked at her and said "Thank goodness there is a farm girl on this staff"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NX-GkXagHs Here you go Wayne....
Well,....this thread has covered the standard conventional single hole outhouse, "two-holers" and thanks to Paul Griesse and Unca' Stan,....."three-holers".
Now then,......ya' gotta' be old enough to know what a "four-holer" was. For some of the younger guys that might not know,.....it wasn't a very large outhouse, but rather a rather large Buick!
Buick made some darn good cars, but the only drawback might be that the biggest and most expensive Buicks (four-holers) might be (by the unknowing) compared to an outhouse!
By the way, the smaller Buicks were sometimes known as "three-holers".
So that's my bit of important automotive history for today! Hey,......us old guys don't get this gray hair for nothin'!
The 4 holer Buicks were call Roadmonster.
********THREAD DRIFT ALERT**********
One of my uncles always drove a "four hole Buick". Always the nicest car of all my uncles/aunts.
I believe those holes in the fenders were called "Ventiports," by Buick, which is what holes number two and number three were on a hot summer day in the above part of this thread. =)
We got running water at the ranch when I was about 6, we had an artesian well drilled to about 800 feet. It still flows about two gallons a minute. We had cold water to a sink in the kitchen and later got a hot water tank with a manifold that went in beside the grates of the coal kitchen stove. When I was about 10 or 11 we put in a bathroom in the house. Since we now had both hot and cold running water in the house my dad built a shower in the bathroom, put in a stool and we put in a septic tank. Since we now had water all over the house we had to keep it from freezing in the 40 below winters in eastern Montana and had a little coal stove in the bathroom between the stool and the shower. It would only hold about two or three hours worth of coal so we had to re-stoke it all day and everytime my dad got up in the night he would throw a little more coal in it so it would keep the pipes from freezing. We were glad for the day he came home with a tiny little fuel oil heater to put in the bathroom. It was the wonder of the neighborhood and people came to see (and use) our indoor bathroom. Later on most people had them but this was in about 53 or 54 and it was a pretty new idea where we lived.
This is what's left of the house.
Weren't these called lean toos?
I basically agree on the Buick terminology, but I heard them called "Cruiserline Ventiports." Google bears that term out as well. As I recall, we used to call the automatic transmission "Dynaroar." The more gas you gave it, the more noise it made, but it still pulled away at the same speed.
My mother told me of one day when she scraped up all the coins she could find and had 25c. With that she walked down to the corner store and got enough for dinner for 3 (I was the third one) Dad worked in a furniture manufacturing plant and when they couldn't pay him, he brought home a piece of furniture. You can't eat furniture, but at least he had a job. That was in the 1930's.
Dick - I think Buick's actual name for their early automatic transmissions was "Dynaflow", but around Chicago where I grew up, and around the guys I hung around with, the more common terms were "Dynaslush" or "Dynaflop". I guess this was because of the way their torque converter worked with no actual feeling of gear shifting during acceleration. I have to say however, that as I recall, those old Dynaflow transmissions where very dependable and trouble-free. Remember in the '50's when Buicks motto for their Dynaflow transmission was "switch the pitch"? That was because the vanes in the torque converter actually did change pitch in accordance with power demands/speed/etc.
Anyway, there I go again, showing my age, and, contributing heavily to "thread drift"! Sorry guys,....harold
I love those old GM transmissions of the '50's and later - the single coupling Hydramatic's, the Dynaflow's and MAYBE the Powerglide's. They made the first Hydramatic for the '38? Oldsmobile and changed it very little until 1956. It was used in the Oldsmobile, Cadillac and Pontiac - and - most folks don't know it, but they were put in farm size trucks - and of course, the GMC Deuce and a half trucks. Then, in '56, they went to the dual coupling Hydramatic which shifted more smoothly. The Dynaflow's didn't actually shift unless you used low gear. They just had a variable pitch "whachmacallit??". Then the Flight Pitch Dynaflow came along. It was very similar to the Chevy Turboglide. They weren't to hot. As for the Chevrolet Powerglide, well, they worked, but weren't to classy. Of course, eventually, GM went to the Turbohydramatic 350 & 400 which they used for years.
Today's transmissions - well, they work, but have no class. The same holds true for the cars of today. YMMV.
Having said all that, for my own use, if it has a bed on the back, it should have a clutch pedal.
The comments about the number of holes reminded me of this. In the summer of 1971 when I stopped at Independence Rock in Wyoming this relic from an earlier age of motor touring was still standing. I regret that I didn't take a picture of the building's exterior, but I did get this shot of the works. It was the only twelve-holer I've ever seen.
Thats like a gaseous orgy of sorts. Must have sounded like a hit and miss when everybody chinned in..
Touring a coastal castle in europe, I couldn't resist looking down into the bathroom hole (very modern for this place, indoors and all). Wow, what a surprise. I hadn't realized this part of the castle was built slightly out over the shoreline cliffs. Looking into the hole I was shocked to see daylight and about a 300 foot drop to the breaking waves below. Never needed cleaning, but must have been very cold in winter.
The "facilities" in the Marksberg Castle on the Rhine. It is built slightly over the edge of the castle wall and is quite an open air drop. I wondered about updrafts.
Mr. Jeff's picture reminds me of what we had when I went into the Service, a long line of crappers, and a concrete foot bath you walked through to get to the showers, supposed to kill athlete's foot and all sorts of stuff. The crappers on board ships (thank God I wasn't in the Navy) had a similar setup, when the ship was underway, the water flowing through kept them "flushed", don't know what they did when they were in port.
Built this at our cottage in Canada 5 years ago. It has a powered vent in the back. No smell at all!
schuh
As long as the vent is kept open, it doesn't even need to be powered. If spiders clog the vent with webs things can get smelly, but clean the webs out of the vent and all is well.
Back in the early 90's, my wife and I took a train trip to Seattle. I remember the PA system telling the attendants to "Please inhibit the waste recovery system" every time we came into a town. I wondered what this meant, but understood when I took a leak while traveling at high speed across Northern Montana - the tracks were screaming along below the hole. I wonder if they still work that way today.
Trains in Russia still drop onto the tracks - guess it reduces walking the rail lines, tho would hate to be on a track crew there...
Speaking of, when we were there, we were touring the city park (and "kremlin") at one of the small towns, had to "go", and saw what looked like your average park restroom... until you opened the door... and understood where the term S***hole came from. Sensory and cultural overload x100.
(BTW, yes, I still used it, but it gave me an appreciation for Porta-potties and grandma's old one-holer... that vision will haunt me for years...)
You need to practice hunkering before attempting one of those holes for the first time.
I spent last Oct in Haiti building a church,the men never took paper to the bushes,note leaves were small,a wave was as good as a hand shake.
A wiz was public.
I remember when they were building the new Naval Air base at Sigonella Sicily. The upper base with housing, admin, etc., had regular stools but at the airfield the new facilities were a hole in the floor with two places to put your feet. Guess they didn't want people doing much reading in there.
This is one my wife and I built a couple years ago at our weekend farm. Built it to match the old barn.
Vince
Vince
Trains nowadays in the US have microphor systems that take solid waste and turn it into a liquid safe enough to drink. LOL
Hey Susanne, trains in all of Europe were still dropping it on the tracks just a few years ago, I do not know if they have changed. I mentioned that to a friend in Germany when we were there, and he told me I was crazy, so when our train pulled in, I found a rest room that was not locked and we looked down the hole at the tracks. The conductor would normally look the restrooms just before they wre to stop in a station to prevent someone from leaving their calling card in front of the platform.
Hey Steve, I see your 12 holer and raise you a 21 holer. The out house at the base of the Little Wood reservoir in Idaho for the crew that built the dam. It collapsed into the Little Wood River 40 years ago, and I always wished I had had a camera when it was still there.
Best
Gus
Likewise with some of the older train stock in the uk. Made for me to be very cautious when doing traction motor inspections. That was when we lived there 5 years ago. Regards, Bede.
That 12 holer reminds me of the multi holers we had in Viet Nam that used half 55 gal drums filled with diesel fuel. You didn't want to be first after a refill as the backsplash was wicked. You also didn't want to be assigned the job of burning those used drums, don't ask me how I know!!
Howard Dennis
USMC Nam 68-69
Oh yeah, we came from such a poor neighborhood the people across the road had to share corn cobs. They were constantly recycling their water. And I'm not going to tell you what they fed the dog.
Howard, that was a smell that is hard to forget! Dave
US Army, Nam, '70-'71
Howard, that job was always given to the REMF's or some LZ's would have Papasan doing it. He'd kick back on his heals and smoke whatever that smelly weed was that he was smoking and get up every once in a while and stir the pot with a 2X4. It's a smell you'll never forget. Not having to be around it was the best part of the bush.
US Army, Americal Division, Northern I Corp, Operation Lam Son 719, Nam, '70-'71.
You guys have it so rough. Heck you should have lived with these horrible condition at 30 degrees below zero. I always waited till somebody just came out and I'd sit on the warm seat.
The USMC wasn't big enough back then to have "contract workers" so they just assigned us new guys to it before they sent us out to the bush. I'd almost forgotten the stirring and the smell, Thanks for reminding me!
Howard Dennis
USMC Nam 68-69
But do you guys know what the crap was that Papasan was smoking. There's a smell you won't forget either. And can you think of anything more beautiful than an old bare breasted Mountainyard woman standing next to her hooch and smiling with those red beetlenut teeth. Now there's a woman you wanted to bring home to meet Mama. Another memory was Mamasan spreading the rice all over QL-1 for about a hundred feet down the road to dry. The convoys would go through there wide open at about 40 miles an hour and that rice would fly all over and become a mess. When you went back through later She'd have it all spread out to dry again and the trucks would blow it all over again. I remember being up to my _ss in a paddy and looking over and seeing some little 50 lb babysan with a switch moving a 2500 lb water buffalo down a rice paddy dike. That little kid and that huge animal were best of friends, but let a GI get anywhere close to that animal and it went ballistic.
Ok, I know I wandered off a little here but the thought of the smell of those burning half barrels got to me. I suppose it'll be another rough night tonight.
On the subject of latrines...my dad told a story about their occupation of an island in the Pacific during WWII. A latrine ditch was needed, so a group of Japanese POW's were enlisted to dig the ditch down the side of a hill. Well...someone forgot about them and when they finally noticed, they had dug down the hill and halfway up the next. At night Japanese troops would come in and forage through their trash for sustenance..... Hopefully this anecdote will help take your mind off of your experiences,Mike.
Bob
In Korea the farmers would store up sewage all winter. In the spring they would use a dipper made from a helmet liner on a long pole and spread it on the rice paddies. It was pretty smelly for a few days, but when that rice came up it was gorgeous.