Outhouses

When I was young, we had a beach cottage with an outhouse.  I'm not really nostalgic about that.  The last time I used an outhouse was in 1988, I think, at a gas station in Maine.  You'd think that all gas stations would have flush toilets by now, but I suppose that American regulations are looser.

Dolly Parton said about the toilets in her mansion: "It has four rooms and a bath.  When I was young, we had four rooms and a path!"

It's easy to forget that the flush toilet is largely a recent invention, though the Minoans in ancient Greece had a version.  A lot of the world still uses outhouses.  When I was a kid, I was watching a colourful historical epic with fancy costumes and wondering, "Did those people go to the bathroom?" Back then, of course, they had outhouses!

Today's young people in the developed world have never used an outhouse.  I guess that in some ways they have it easier than we did.  Yet I also think about some of the pleasure we had that they miss out on, like Sunday funnies back when the newspapers provided more space for comics, TV shows like Ed Sullivan, or dorky enjoyment like the old Walt Disney movies. (Disney still makes movies, but they aren't as "square" these days.) And there's nothing quite like the old radio shows.