When I was a small child, indoor plumbing was just beginning to appear in Randolph and outhouses were standard equipment at every dwelling. I remember one of my great aunts saying that living under the same roof with a crapper was a revolting thought and if someone brought one into the house she would move out. Later when I was a teenager almost everyone had indoor plumbing but there were many outhouses still standing, either as a backup in case that new-fangled indoor facility quit working or as a spare when relatives visited and the crowd became too big for one toilet. In those days it was unheard of to have more than one toilet in a house.
One of the most popular tricks for pranksters on Halloween was upsetting outhouses. They were tall and narrow and usually fairly easy to push over, one just had to be careful not to fall into the “goober” pit. If that happened a clean-up session at the creek would be needed because you would smell too bad to sneak into your own house.
Kenny and I did not usually partake in this pastime because it was too mundane, took no imagination, and anyone could do it – we needed more of a challenge. Fortunately we did not have long to wait for the golden opportunity to appear.
We were sitting in the local bar one evening when “Mr. Robert” walked in. After a few beers he started bragging in a strong German accent about his outhouse. It went something like this:
“By Godt, nobody vill be upsetten MY shithouse zis year. Zose halloveeners tried for ze last 10 yearss at Halloveen und zey were chust not strong enough to do it”, he bragged on and on.
Well now that definitely got our attention. This was like waving a red flag in front of a bull!
We knew that Mr. Robert would be in the bar for awhile bragging about “his shithouse” so we went over to check this thing out. It was a fancy facility with curtains and plaster and wallpaper inside. What he had done to foil the tricksters was place 2 inch angle irons all the way up each outside corner of the outhouse and set each in a large block of concrete. This made the building very stable and I don’t think a truck could have pulled it over.
This called for extreme measures. We considered two options. Option number one was using a torch to cut the angle irons, but we rejected this idea because it called for heavy tanks of acetylene and oxygen, and we just might end up burning the outhouse down instead of upsetting it. So we decided on option number two – sawing the angle irons.
The next day I went up to Montigney’s Hardware in Ravenna and bought a dozen of the best hacksaw blades I could find and mounted them in frames. We knew Mr. Robert and his wife would attend the bingo game at St. Joe’s the following Saturday night so we planned our attack for then.
We talked two of our buddies into helping with the operation. We spotted Mr. Robert’s car at St. Joe’s, knocked on the door to make sure nobody was home, and started sawing – one person at each corner. After about an hour of labor and several broken saw blades we finally sawed through the angle irons. We then gave the outhouse a shove – and over she went!
Later that evening we stopped at the local gas station and the owner Jim Jones told us that Mr. Robert had driven in squealing his tires and fuming mad. He said that he was looking for the people who upset his shithouse and when he found them he was going to shoot off their kneecaps and other things that I won’t mention. Jim told us we had better go home and keep quiet about this if we wanted to live.
After this incident Mr. Robert appeared to be a changed man. He never did set the outhouse back up, no more bragging, and seemed to have lost his spirit. It looked as if this outhouse was the most important thing in his life. Seeing this made me feel somewhat remorseful and sorry for him.
But then you should never go into a bar and challenge young people that way. It just isn’t prudent!
