We all know how hard it can be at this time of year to think of gifts for friends and family who seem to have everything they need.
Thankfully, I don’t need to worry much about holiday shopping these days. My wife does most of my gift worrying for me. My main concern is what to get her, and vice-versa. Generally, we each get it pretty close to right.
More challenging than kids and spouses, are parents, though that’s no longer a worry. But for years it was. Dad was easy – fishing tackle. But Mom didn’t go fishing.
Nonetheless, some 45 years ago, I came up with the perfect gift for Mom. It may have been for Christmas or Mother’s Day; I don’t remember for which.
But the gift itself was unforgettable, and absolutely necessary.
I built Mom a new outhouse.
For more than 20 years on the farm we had relied on a “well ventilated” old outhouse. I’m not sure when it was built, maybe in the 1930s or 1940s.
It looked it, for sure. Built of rough-sawn oak, its weathered, rotting boards with inch-wide gaps between them barely kept out the wind, rain and snow. A misstep on its floor boards threatened to dump the user into a smelly abyss, and the door barely hung from two rusty hinges, half the screws long gone.
I will not go into details about the guts of the “facilities,” because they consisted of nothing more than two holes in the bench. No tissue paper roller was required, as for most of my youth our “Charmin” was newspapers and Sears catalogs.
Dad had promised Mom indoor plumbing from the time they bought the old house in 1957, but it never happened. Dad seemed not to mind the situation at all.
The rest of us just put up with it. My two youngest brothers had known nothing else; but Mom didn’t like it at all.
I wish I could build an indoor “necessary room” indoors for Mom, but all I could afford was a better outhouse.
So I set to work building her one, not on the site, but in my own back yard. It was to be a surprise. Unbeknownst to Mom, I measured all of the dimensions of the old facility on one of my regular visits, then made a trip to the local lumber yard.
I had never built an outhouse before, but I was sure I could. I had formerly built hundreds of oak and plywood farrowing houses for a hog farm at Charity. How much harder could an outhouse be?
Turns out it was easier, with clear pine lumber and outdoor plywood; it all went together in less than a day. I even added commercial toilet seats, paper spools and locks on the door, as well as screen wire between the rafters to keep bugs from coming in. Then I painted it inside and out.
The only things I didn’t include were the wasps and spiders. Mom was on her own, there.
Once I had it built I had just a couple more things to do: First, I had to get it down to the farm – no problem, thanks to the loan of Paul Frey’s pickup and trailer. Second, I had to dig a hole to stand it over; but I didn’t need any help with that. A decade earlier a couple of years of digging waterline ditches made me well-qualified for that chore.
Once I was done I was satisfied Mom had never had such a first class outhouse. I was mighty proud of it. It might not have been heated, but no snow would blow through the cracks.
And, yes; Mom was surprised. For as long as she remained on the farm – another 30 years or so – Mom had a decent outhouse.
After Dad passed on, she moved in with us.
Mom then had her choice of three bathrooms – every one of them indoors.
I know she missed Dad, her friends at church and the familiarity (despite the disrepair) of the house that was home to her, my dad and their four boys.
But I’m sure she never missed the outhouse – not even the “new” one.
Copyright 2025, James E. Hamilton, P.O.Box 801, Buffalo, MO 65622.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
