The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

Writing last week about my grandmother brought back some more memories, one of which has to do with the general state of plumbing back when Grandma was growing up, in the early 1900’s.

Plumbing wise, there were outdoor toilets, labelled for some reason “outhouses,” perhaps to avoid calling them something that actually described what they were really for. This was an era before Thomas Crapper invented something that eventually became an indoor toilet. Hmmm. I wonder why they were never labelled “inhouses.”

Outhouses were actually not so bad a deal regarding the general disposal of human waste. Liberal amounts of lime mineral were thrown down the holes periodically. That took care off the smell.

Left alone to their own pace, bacteria did a pretty good biological job of breaking down everything that dropped in there through a sliver-edged wooden hole into basic chemicals and compounds. And when that hole in the ground was full, the owner had the choice of topping it off with earth and digging a new one, or shovelling it out and spreading it on the fields and gardens for fertilizer.

Luckily or not, I was born into that era. Got there late, but I was there for the end. I know the first hand delights of dealing with this level of outdoor plumbing. I wasn’t old enough to be any help on the digging or disposing of waste, but I have vivid memories of what we then used for toilet paper. 

Regarding toilet paper, and the first advent of shiny catalogues, rather than the older more malleable paper, I,  like everyone else, wholeheartedly disliked those new modern Monkey Ward catalogues. I, like everyone else, looked forward to the late summer when Ma canned peaches, peaches which came individually wrapped in wonderfully soft paper, the likes of which are barely matched with modern toilet paper. It’s an oddity of human brainpower and old age that I remember how wonderful those peach wrappers were  but cannot remember what I had for supper yesterday.

But to Grandma, then, retired and just moved to town, all this modern plumbing didn’t change her mind about keeping what was known as a slop bucket underneath the kitchen sink. Even in town, when they left the farm to be run by my parents, Grandma had chickens. And a garden. Both of which were eventual destinations for the contents of that slop bucket.

Into that bucket went the remains of all and anything excess in the kitchen. All new and old food scraps, vegetable or meat, liquid or solid–all of it. To say that the slop bucket and therefore the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink smelled bad is wonderfully inadequate. Even my bad memory cannot forget that smell.

But Grandma got older. So did the time the slop bucket spent under there. Whew. And eventually, there were no more chickens to reward with the slop bucket’s contents.

Visiting Grandma has left a lot of wonderful memories.

High on the list is that slop bucket.

It should be added here that Grandma was famous for her tasty sauerkraut. Which she made under the kitchen sink in a large Red Wing crock. Which sat right beside the slop bucket.

One can only wonder.