Several years ago I started writing stories about my childhood and am now sharing some of them with my readers...The next one is very different from the two previous blogs about making and eating bread...I was 8 years old when we moved from Utah to Lake Fork, Idaho and I have vivid memories of those growing up years...Also this style of writing is called "creative nonfiction," meaning that I might embelish if my memory is hazy...These are my memories, as only I remember them.
What No Bathroom
About two years before moving to Idaho, my parents added a bathroom to our house in Utah. No longer did we make the trek outside in all kinds of weather to use the outhouse, or take a bath in the small round tub in the middle of the kitchen floor. The shiny white tub sat in one corner of the new bathroom with a toilet next to it. I remember sitting in a tub full of hot water, legs stretched out full length, soaking. Then with a twist of the tap more hot water flowed into the bathtub and I could soak even longer. But now, we moved to a new house far away in Idaho, and again there stood an outhouse next to the woodshed. The trips to the smelly outhouse started once more. It was winter and I hated sitting down on the cold wooden seat, the shock almost made you forget why you had left the warmth of the house, in the first place. The early morning trip proved even colder than the night before! In comparing this outhouse to the one in Utah, I liked this one better. It had two seats, a shorter one for kids, where my feet touched the floor. Here, in this harsh land I would soon learn to appreciate the little things in life.
There was a fun side to the outhouse for our older cousins. They ofen came in the summers to help with the haying. One year, our cousin brought his new “city” wife, and he always accompanied her on the nightly trip to the toilet. The other cousins soon picked up on this, and started plotting to scare her. First, they hid behind trees and howled like a coyote, which made her really nervous, but they wanted more of a reaction. The next night they carefully placed a bobcat hide around the toilet seat, then hid in the hayfield and waited. When her bare bottom touched the bobcat fur, she didn’t disappoint them. I imagine the screams are still echoing from one end of Long Valley to the other.
The weekly Saturday night bath was taken in a small round galvanized tub in the middle of the kitchen floor, in front of the wood burning range, the warmest place in the house. We were lucky to have running water piped into the house from a well, but we didn’t have a hot water heater. Bath night worked a certain way at our house. Mom would have to heat water on the wood stove in several kettles and then pour them into the tub and put more water on to heat. She then added cold water to get the right temperature. Then Mom took the first turn because she was the cleanest of the dirty. After she finished, hot water was added and I was next. Then we followed up the line in order of age, hot water added with every person. Daddy was always the last in line, and I don’t know if he ever got to take a bath in clean water. Hugs To All...OWAV:) To be continued.
Idella and Mona about 1945
Mona and Idella, the summer before
we moved to Idaho 1950
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