My new bedroom.

I recently had a major renovation in Sam/Bret/'s old room.  It entailed  a bathroom "remodel".  It was a majorchange and I want to tell you that the man in charge of said remodel is nothing short of a genius.  He knew more about what I wanted in a bathroom than I did.  Suffice it to say, I am now in the process of moving my bedroom down stairs so I can be closer to "my bathroom."  I do realize that as the homeowner, every room is "mine", but this room is special.   

 t

When I paint a room, it changes the color, but when a room is redesigned by someone else and reflects my wants and needs so in tune to my desires so perfectly, it is damn scary.  This man  even knew what colors were in my head.  Few men even know I have a head much less one with a brain rattling around up there,

but Mitch is one in a million.

So, now I have a house full of kids for my "Happy Birthday Weekend" and I am down here in what will soon be "my room".  Right now I have a twin bed in here, but that shall  change,   Kay has an old  (I mean antique old, not old "old"} which she is giving me and as soon as I get this room carpeted and buy a mattress and hang a curtain on the window, it will be my sanctuary.

As I bring this to a close know that I am setting on a paint can with my laptop on my knees and this is not my best work, but it is what it is.

I am on the up side of the sod and that is good!!!

A chamber pot, by any other name is still gross.

Now this morning you are going to learn something you probably could have gone the rest of your life without knowing, and yet here I am.  Since I lived through the chamber pot days, you ought to at least be able to read about them!  So here we go!

Once upon a time, long, long ago,  there was a little girl who lived in a ramshackle house on Strong Street in Nickerson, Kansas.  She lived there with her mother, father, older sister, older brother and 3 younger sisters.  The house had electricity, but they never used it except to run the pump and the washing machine.  They did not want to "wear it out" nor did they want to appear "uppity."  They owned a car, but it was only used on Sundays when the went to Plevna to see great grandma Hatfield and Grandma Haas.  They were simple folks, you see.

The house had 2 bedrooms, a front room, a dining room and a kitchen/laundry/Saturday night bath room and a book case with Nancy Drew mystery's on the shelves.  Oh, and Brenda Starr.  So I guess that was also a library.  The "front" bedroom was Dad's, but he had to share with us big kids, Josephine, Jake, Donna, Mary and me. Dorothy slept with Mother in the middle (other) bedroom.  Mother needed her privacy and the only time we were allowed to sleep with her was when we were sick.

Ah, but back to the chamber pot business.  For those of you who are antique collectors you will recognize a "chamber pot" as a porcelain bucket with a handle for carrying.  Usually it was white with a lid and a line of blue around the top for decoration.  I never quite understood that whole decoration thing, but I guess it is what it is.  The main purpose (Well actually, the ONLY purpose.) of the chamber pot was to hold human excrement during the night and was immediately emptied upon the household arising.  It was called a chamber pot, because most people had a private area when one could go in and close the door and do "their business in private.  Not us!  Nope.  We did not have a chamber anywhere in that house and if we did there would no doubt be a kid in there.  It was probably about 120 feet from the back door of the house to the outhouse.  Now I do not know if you have ever been out in the wilds of Nickerson, Kansas, at night without a flashlight, but let me tell you, that is one damn scary place.

Number one, our house was probably about a block from the cemetery, and there was that business of ghosts for our little minds to deal with on dark, moonless nights.  Nights with a full moon were even worse!  And the river was not far so it was not unusually to hear a wolf, coyote or cougar howling or screaming and scaring the living shit right out of us.  That, coupled with the fact that dad had seen Gypsies camped on the outskirts of town and you know what that meant.  You see Gypsies came into towns and stole the children.  Luckily we never actually missed anyone, but that was because people like my father seen them and made the kids stay inside.

But back to the chamber pot saga!  Ours set right under the window between the kids bed and dad's bed.  After dark we were free to use the chamber pot and by morning it was full.  Now I trust I do not need to tell you what it was full of, do I?  It was usually Jake's chore to take it out to the outhouse and dispose of it, rinse the container and turn it upside down to drip dry and air out.  When Josephine eloped at the tender age of 15 or so and Jake left home, the duty fell to me.  I was smart enough to know that the sooner I got that thing the lighter my chore would be.  If I waited too long those other kids would not go outside and soon it was full to the brim.  Just try carrying one of those things without slopping it on your feet.

We left that house when I was 16 and I never ceased to be amazed that we had an "inside bathroom" in every house we lived in after that.  Not only did the houses have a commode that flushed, but there was a small sink to wash my face and look in the mirror.  And the bathtub!  My God!  That was pure bliss to sink into and soak. (It was also handy for throwing up in when I came home so drunk I could not hit the stool!  But that is another story and we probably are not going to go there!  Sorry, momma.)

Speaking of bathrooms, I probably ought to get off here and go clean mine.  Thinking back on those years always makes me appreciate what I have now.

Have a good day and thank the Lord for the little things he gives you.  You could be growing up on Strong Street in Nickerson, Kansas.

The Outhouse seems to be a thing of the past!

I fell to reminiscing today with a fellow and how we got on the subject of outhouses escapes me.  We did seem to be of the consensus that we did like the fact that they now seem to be a thing of the past that will not be repeated in today's world.  For those of you who do not know what an outhouse is, let me tell you.
Way back in the days before indoor plumbing the restroom "facilities" were located in a small building out back which was perched over a deep open hole in the ground.  Inside the building was a raised plank which had one hole cut in it and you can just imagine what went on in there. Some of these were constructed to be very sturdy and actually had hooks on the inside of the door to keep intruders out while you did your business.
Ours usually had a Sears & Roebuck catalog on the floor and that was what became known as "toilet paper."  Now, I am here to tell you that I much preferred the old catalogs that were printed on cheap paper as opposed to the newer ones with colored pictures.  Colored picture are slick, in case you wondered.  My brother could often be found gazing at the section where the women were modeling bra's and such.  That was his idea of pornography.  It was my idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up.  No, not a model, but a woman with those bumps on her chest.
I did not ever spend much time in that little "outhouse" as I lived in mortal terror of many things in that building.  The first was that I could be attacked by a giant spider and I had seen black widows out there so I could only guess where they were lurking when I was at my most vulnerable.  The second was that you can imagine how fragrant the whole mess was.  And thirdly, there was always the possibility that the floor could collapse and I could plunge into that mess and die a very untimely death.
This trip was always made its most horrific by the setting of the sun.  I would wait until right before the sun went down to make my last trip out.  I have heard that motto of the mailman about how neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night shall stay the faithful mailman from his rounds.  I adopted the same as my mantra for my last call of the night.  It was always a good thing to have a full moon.  Course then I had to worry about vampires and werewolves.  And snow.  No one ever seemed to shovel a path "out back."  At our house, nobody ever shoveled a path anywhere.  Just put on your old buckle up galoshes and hit the trail.
Why am I telling you all this?  Because it is the truth and the truth is often brutal.  Outhouses were a way of life back then and I remember my joy when we moved to Hutchinson when I was 16 and we had an honest to God bathroom with running water and a flushing toilet, and all of it was inside with a door that closed and a lock that kept people on the other side of the door.
And a stove that was powered by gas that came into the house through a pipe from the street.  Lights were turned on by a switch on the wall.  I was amazed to find that other people had these things for a long time and took them for granted.  Hutchinson even had parks where we could play instead of playing in the cemetery.
Don't know what brought all this to my memory tonight, but just wanted to share it with you.