Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Uncle Bubba Built an Outhouse- How is That for Handmade........

"Uncle Bubba's Outhouse"
(currently gender neutral by the way...)



I am increasingly becoming more of a country girl at heart. I grew up in the country but was not fortunate enough to live on a working farm. Living on a farm is my dream.

We always had a garden, dogs, horses, and when I was really small, we had chickens (baby yo-yo's- I called them). I vaguely remember a pig somewhere in my clouded childhood memories too. My father grew up farming and in my opinion, farming stays in your blood. He always was plowing something up, bush hogging, or some such other type of farming activity. He is gone now but his legacy lives on....

My brother has farming in his blood. (Hey wait, isn't this supposed to be about an outhouse?) Bare with me, I'm getting to it...

Like I was saying, my brother has farming in his blood. He also acquired or "inherited", a creative building streak from our late grandfather. Tie the two things together- farming and building. The result is an outhouse.

See, I told you this would end up about an outhouse.... just trust me next time.

Uncle Bubba (And no, that is not his real name- just what my kids call him. The funny thing is, I have called him Bubba for as long as I remember too.) (Rosemary, stay focused)

As I was saying, Uncle Bubba built this outhouse over a couple of days from some aged wood. We would visit his farm every couple of days and watched the progress of the outhouse until one day, it was finished (complete with seat and hole, no less).


(Back View)

This outhouse even has a rusty old tin roof on it. The door has a very creaky old hinge on it that reminds you of some old fashioned country screen door. He was going to cut a moon shape in the door but he hasn't gotten to it yet. Regardless of what shape is on the door, it appears to be a fully functional outhouse in every sense of the word.

Hey the locals have totally "dug" Uncle Bubba's outhouse and moved in. So, can you guess who actually moved into his outhouse? You would never guess in a million years (unless you have older relatives that know what I'm talking about).

OK, I give in, I can never leave people in suspense. A family of skunks dug up under the outhouse and were living under the seat. Not only is it funny that skunks moved into an outhouse, what was really funny was the surprise that Uncle Bubba received when it was almost dark and he noticed something white- moving inside of the outhouse bench. Luckily, he did not get sprayed but I would imagine he ran. Ran long and fast.

If you ever need to know how to run a family of skunks from your outhouse, moth balls in a jar with holes poked in the lid, do the trick.

A little outhouse history: the moon on the door was for a woman's outhouse, a sun or star shape was for a man's outhouse. The sun or star shape was harder to cut out so, throughout time, people just seemed to stick with the moon shape. The moon shape just kind of "stuck" as the official outhouse door shape.

We joke that we are going to bring Uncle Bubba a tin can with corn cobs in it next time we visit. (We tried to save some up the last time we ate corn on the cob, but when we put the corn cobs out to dry on the back step, the neighbor's cat drug them off into the yard.) Maybe one day we'll finally get to surprise him with some corn cobs. There is always his birthday after all.

3 comments:

  1. Is the economy getting THAT bad?!

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  2. Hee hee, I hope not! He was just bored I think and wanted to try building one. At least the skunks had somewhere to hang out for awhile.

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  3. If a stink is going to happen, that's the best place!

    P.S. The piggy banks are my husband's. He loves pigs!

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