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Special Occasion Outhouse

By Capper's Staff
Published on August 24, 2012

We live a mile from town and were getting ready to celebrate Our fiftieth anniversary. Our four children and their spouses, our twelve grandchildren and six great-grandchildren were to be here for a week to ten days, and our two bathrooms would hardly be sufficient, especially with our poor septic tank.

But Grandpa rose to the occasion. He bought plywood and built an outhouse. I insisted he paint it brown so that it wouldn’t stand out too much. The inside, however, was left light and inspired the kids to make up humorous verses and sign their names. Those walls make interesting reading.

For more comfort in the outhouse, Grandpa put an old bathroom stool seat on one of the two holes. When visiting this special toilet one little city boy took one look at the seat and said,

“It won’t work! It won’t flush!”

Blanche Collins 
Sun City, Kansas


Back in 1955 a call went out from the editors of the then Capper’s Weekly asking for readers to send in articles on true pioneers. Hundreds of letters came pouring in from early settlers and their children, many now in their 80s and 90s, and from grandchildren of settlers, all with tales to tell. So many articles were received that a decision was made to create a book, and in 1956, the first My Folks title – My Folks Came in a Covered Wagon – hit the shelves. Nine other books have since been published in the My Folks series, all filled to the brim with true tales from Capper’s readers, and we are proud to make those stories available to our growing online community.