Bona School, part I

Chapter 6

Bona School

 

Con Frieze's drawing of Bona School as it appeared in 1936

By the time we moved to that little farm south of Bona, Richard and I had attended four or five different schools ranging from the large Faxon Elementary in Kansas City to the little grey-weathered one room school, Shady Grove, where we went from Doc Hunt’s place and where Rex started in the first grade.  We attended Bona School from the time we moved to the big yellow house, then the white house and, finally, the little three-room house all just south of Bona.

Bona School (also known as the Lindley School, I guess because the Lindley family had founded it) was one step beyond the common one-room country school room.  Bona School sat on top of a low hill one-mile north of Bona itself.  It was a three-room “Jobe School” (I do not know why), having grades one through ten so it was sort of a combination of elementary and junior high school.  I would reckon that in “olden days” most farm kids did not go to school beyond tenth grade.

Bona School was a white clapboard building built in the shape of a “T.”  Across the ront there were two rooms and added onto the back was a third smaller room.  We referred to the back room as the “Little Room” because that was where they had grades on through four.  The larger room on the north side of the front was the “Middle Room” with grades five through eight.  The other was the “Big Room” where there were the older children in grades nine and ten.

To me there was definite advantage in those country schools with several classes in one room and where each class went in turn to the front row of seats to recite.  Since I usually found the work in my own grade quite easy, I would often listen in on the lectures of the teacher to the more advanced classes and then the following year I was familiar with much of the work.  I would often take home school books to read and study on my own over a weekend just to find out things I wanted to know—science books and geography in particular because I wanted to know about the world and everything in it.  I did not care much for history and both mathematics and grammar seemed to come easy for me.

To get back to Bona School, each of the rooms had its own coal stove for heat in the winter.  All were connected to a central brick chimney.  The rooms had moveable wall dividers between them that could be removed for social events, school plays, and the like. [It seems to me that schools thought moveable walls were an innovation in the 1970s and ‘80s] The desks were mounted on boards instead of the floor so that they could all be rotated to face the little stage that was located at one side of the Middle Room.

The school did not have a carbide lighting system like the Bona Church.  When we first started there, evening events were still lighted by coal oil lamps and lanterns; however, about that time the principal, Mr. Hardesty, raised enough money through pie suppers, etc., that they could buy six Coleman gasoline lanterns which gave considerably better light. 

Wikipedia describes pie suppers as being an Ozark phenomenon to raise money for schools, but I know for sure that they happened in Oklahoma as well.  Young ladies made pies and fixed picnic baskets which were auctioned off to the highest bidder (usually a man) and they ate with them.  The money went to the school.  I remember my grandmother telling about them being common in her day.

A Wondrous Place to Grow UP

On a small farm, the barn is a source of both work and amusement for growing boys—mostly the former.  One of the best things about a barn is the hayloft.  Our cousins and we could while away hours at a time up there.  There was always some baled hay that we could use to build “secret” caves and the main part of the loft usually had lots of loose hay.

Up along the ridgepole of a barn there would be a trolley on a track that was used to bring in the loose hay in piles.  It was equipped with long ropes and made a perfect place to practice gymnastics.  A frequent competition involved climbing up the end wall of the barn then come swinging down on the hay-rope to drop and land in a pile of hay.  The idea was to see who could go the highest and swing the farthest.  I did not much care for the long drop but I was always bound and determined to climb just as high and swing just as far as Richard, James Lowell, and Claude Todd—all of whom were roughly two years older than me.  Somehow, I survived.

Con Frieze's hand drawn directions for making a whistle and a panther call.

While I was on the subject of the things we made for ourselves in lieu of store-bought toys, I should have mentioned the whistles that we used to make to signal each other in the woods.  One was a whistle that we could make from a small maple limb in the spring or early summer when the trees were full of sap and new growth.

A maple whistle is fairly easy—if you know how.  You select a green limb about three quarters of an inch in diameter and cut a straight section about six inches long.  One end was trimmed at a slant for a mouthpiece and a notch cut through the bark an inch from that end.  The bark was then loosened by gently tapping it all along and all around to bruise it but not crack it, then the bark could be slipped right off the wood in one tube.

You then cut away most of the wood from the notch to about half an inch from the other end.  When the damp bark is slipped back on you have a perfectly good one-not “flute,” the pitch being dependent on the length and diameter of the whistle.  I used to try to make a longer one so I could cut some finger holes to have different notes but it was next to impossible to get the bark off a longer one in one piece without cracking it.

Another good noisemaker we sometimes made was a “panther call” made from a short section of green elder.  Elder grows with a thin shell around pith in the middle.  Using a piece about three inches long and three-eighths of an inch in one end.

The last step is to very carefully taper the sidewalls just a little at the end opposite the remaining pith.  The two halves can then be placed together and held between the heels of cupped hands.  You then stick the thing into your mouth and blow.  Opening and closing your cupped fingers can produce an eerie, almost blood-curdling, quavering squall that can be heard for a mile or more.

There were no panthers or cougars in the Ozark hills in the thirties, but there had been in pioneer days.  One time two of the older school boys created quite a commotion in that part of Dade County for a couple of days using those “panther calls.”  They each made one, then in the evening went to an isolated area of thick underbrush down along the Little Sac River northwest of Bona that was called “the cane brakes.”  After dark they separated about half a mile apart and started calling back and forth with their gizmos.

It was a blood-curdling sound, indeed, in the dark of the night.  The story quickloly went around the next day that panthers had come back to the Ozark hills of Dade County.  Those who had heard it swore that it was a cougar and his mate calling back and forth.

Plans were made around Bona to get up an armed posse to hunt the panthers down before they started killing farm animals.  At that point the perpetrators decided to admit that it was all a hoax because one of them might have gotten himself shot if they tried it another night.

(No, neither Richard and I, nor our cousins were involved—although we might well have been had we thought of it first!)

So, you see, Hard Times notwithstanding, there was always plenty of things for us boys to do even though we lacked Little League, the Boy Scouts, soccer, movies, or television.  We never felt that we were underprivileged.  Those Ozark hills were, indeed, a beautiful and wondrous place for growing up.  All that was needed was a fishin’ line, squirrel rifle, a pocket knife honed sharp, and a good imagination.

At least one store-bought toy of my father's childhood survived.  He still had it when he passed away at age 80 in 2002 so it must have been important to him.  Trix, whom I always thought was Pluto from the Disney cartoons, is a WaKourva push button puppet collapsing dog.  I even found an identical one on the Internet which was good since other than the name Trix, there are no markings or manufacturer.  I discovered that WaKourva was a Swiss toy manufacturer which raises more questions than it answers about how Trix ended up in Bona, MO.  Once more I wish I'd asked my father more questions.

The Versitile Corncob

When we did not have our rubber band guns handy and wanted to have a war (Richard and I grew up fighting and often not just pretend) corncobs were a favorite weapon.  They were light enough to just sting and not do any real damage like a rock would.  We often had a two-man corncob fight or we could have a dandy war when some of our cousins came over.

We would choose up sides, gather a supply of corncobs in our pockets, scatter out, then go looking for the “enemy” around the barn.  There was not much in the way of rules.  I do not recall that we had any scoring system.  We usually just fought until we got tired of it and went off looking for something else to do.

Of course, leave it to old Dick to figure out a way to cheat.  He often would have a secret supply of corncobs soaking somewhere in a bucket of water.  A dry corncob is light and inaccurate to throw but a wet cob is heavy and throws more like a rock.  You sure knew it when you got belted with one of those!  Naturally we would yell that he was not playing fair and sometimes when he resorted to his “secret weapon” we would get mad and start throwing rocks or else just walk away.  It was usually the latter because throwing rocks could result in a cross-country chase and it was often too hot for that unless you were headed for the creek and a swim.

Those plentiful corncobs were useful for a lot of things.  They made pretty good handles for either a file or a wood rasp and they could be used for a stopper in a water keg or a coal oil can.  They also could be made into dandy corncob pipes.  Fairly recently shelled corncobs were the best for a pipe and I always preferred the red ones.  It seemed that the outer part of the red ones was a bit harder and more durable than the white one and would not burn through so quick.

To make a pipe, you first cut a section of cob about two inches long.  Then, using the small bald of a pocketknife, it was necessary to hollow out the pith from the inside down to within about a quarter of an inch of the bottom.  Again using the small knife blade, a hole for the pipestem was drilled through the cob just above the bottom.

The pipestem was made from a section of grapevine six or seven inches long.  We used a straight section between leaf joints.  The vine has a small pith right down the middle.  We used a straight piece of bailing wire to drill out the pith to make a hole through the vine/pipestem.  The baling wire was heated ret hot over a candle flame or over a sort of burner that could be made from an old baking powder can with a hole cut in the lid.  We would fill it with coal oil and use a strip of gunny sack for a wick.  It gave a hotter flame than a candle.

General MacArthur with his famous corncob pipe. He was born next door in Arkansas

Our parents knew that we made and carried around corncob pipes for fun, but of course, it was stricktly forbidden to put tobacco into one.  Once in a while we might sneak a pipefull of Dad’s Prince Albert but there were a variety of other things we could smoke in a corncob pipe.  We sometimes used coffee grounds but they were quite acrid and did not taste very good.  There were various coarse weed seeds, some of which was called “Indian tobacco” but they had a pretty sharp taste, too.  The best thing was dried cornsilks.  Those cornsilks made pretty fair cigarettes, too, when we got a hold of a packet of cigarette papers from a sack of Bull Durham.  The dry cornsilks rolled into neat cigarettes.  They burned kind of like a dynamite fuse but we could get three or four good puffs before they burned our fingers.

We had to be very careful about smoking anything.  I do believe that Mother had the most sensitive nose in the county.  If we had been down behind the barn smoking cornsilks or something else even way off in the woods, no matter how carefully we chewed on a sassafras root or a willow twig, it seemed that Mother could smell smoke on your straw hat or your clothes almost as far as she could see you.  Sometimes we could make the excuse that we had built a campfire out in the woods, but she could often identify the kind of smoke.

Getting caught smoking was one of the offenses that could result in a good licking.  Mother, however, never administered corporal punishment.  That was reserved for Dad when he came in from the fields.  Most offenses such as smoking cornsilks were good for three or four swings of Dad’s razor strop or his belt.  That was not too bad as the strop or belt were wide enough to just sting a little without making welts.  Our backsides were pretty tough anyway.

In the little I inherited (other than stories) from my father there were two pipes, one of them corncob.  When I went to take a picture of it I could not find it, but I will keep searching because I know I laid hands on it six months ago.

Playing during the Great Depression

In spite of the lack of money for store-bought toys, we boys always had plenty of things to do besides hunting, fishing, and rambling.  If we found some time on our hands, or just wanted something different, we invented something to do.  We made our own slingshots that we carried in a hip pocket from a small fork of a hickory tree, two rubber bands cut from an old automobile inner tube, and a piece of leather from the tongue of a cast-off shoe.  We also sometimes carried some small pebbles in a pocket to shoot at birds, fence posts, tree trunks, and sometimes at each other when we got mad.

You may recall that in an earlier chapter I mentioned the usefulness of that white pine Grandpa used for making egg cases.  The thick end pieces were ideal for whittling out things like boats, airplanes, and rubber band guns.  We could always find some pieces in Grandpa’s kindling box.

Perhaps I should explain about those rubber band guns.  We made them to shoot at each other when he had mock wars.  A piece of that thick white pine was whittled to the shape of a handgun with a barrel long enough to get a good stretch to a loop of rubber cut from one of those old automobile inner tubes.  The rubber band was stretched from the muzzle to a notch at the rear and you fired by flicking the rubber loose with a thumb.  Those heavy rubber bands were not dangerous but they sure did sting, especially if someone got you on the rump while you were bent over with your overalls stretched tight.

One things that was fairly easy to make and afforded many hours of recreation involving muscle power, balance, and coordination was homemade stilts.  We made them from sapling poles about seven feet long by simply hailing on blocks of two by fours to put our feet on.  Beginners and little kids would have the blocks on a few inches off the ground, but, evidently, we vied to see who could walk on them with the blocks the heist.  I once made a pair with the blocks nearly two feet off the ground that gave me a good long giant stride.  Of course it also gave me farther to fall if I got off balance or tripped on a rock.  The latter happened every once in a while as there were plenty of sandrocks and rounded glacial flintrocks in that red Ozark hill soil.

Cedar shingles were handy to have around, too.  We used them to make wood arrows.  Those shingle arrows could not be shot with a bow because they had wood vanes at the tail instead of feathers that would go through your fingers.  Instead, we made a launcher that was sort of a mono-bow.  It was a length of lithe green hickory limb having a lot of spring in it.  A string or piece of fishing line about two feet long was tied to the small end of the throwing stick and a knot was put in the other end of the string to fit into a notch on the arrow.  The trick was to get the arrow balanced and the notch in the right place.

We never shot those shingle arrows at each other as the sharpened point would be dangerous.  Instead, we had contests to see who could shoot the arrow the farthest and the most accurately.  Again without realizing it, we were building coordination, agility, and muscle power.

Exploring the Ozark hills

When it was the wrong season for squirrels and rabbits and the fish were not biting (the “dog days of August”), one of our favorite activities was sampling roaming the countryside “exploring.” Without hardly realizing it, we picked up a lot of woods lore that way.  There was no tree, bird, insect, or varmint that we could not identify.

We learned self-sufficiency, too.  We could leave home right after breakfast on a free day carrying nothing but our fishing lines, a few kitchen matches, and a small packet of salt in the watch pocket of our bib overalls.  Sometimes we would take the twenty-two also.  After a long day in the woods we would come home well fed in time for the evening chores.

It was easy.  We knew everything in the woods that was edible.   We could always swipe a couple of potatoes out of someone’s truck patch along the way and stick one in a back pocket.  Then we might kill a squirrel if we had the rifle or else catch a couple of perch in the creek.  Then all we had to do was build a fire.

high, I would hunker down, rifle cocked and ready, and stay motionless for a few minutes to see if one came out.

If we had a aquirrel, we would gut and skin it then roast it on a spit over the coals.  If we had a fish, we would find a bed of good grey clay, gut the fish, wrap them in clay, and put those also in the coals.  When the clay dried and cracked open we raked them out of the ashes.  The scales and skin came off when we peeled away the clay and presto, a little salt and we had lunch.

One skill that roaming the countryside and, in particular, hunting squirrels taught us was the ability to move silently through the woods and brush.  Squirrels are nervous, flighty little creatures and any strange sound will send them scurrying to cover in a next or a den tree.

There are two ways to hunt squirrels.  One was to find an area of the woods where you had seen squirrels, pick out a comfortable spot on a log or against a tree, then simply sit and be quiet and motionless until the squirrels started moving about.  The other way was to drift silently along through the tick woods keeping a sharp eye out for squirrels darting up a tree or along a branch.  If you stand still, a squirrel will stop and peer at you.  When you see his eye, let him have it. 

I personally preferred the latter method although if I spotted a promising den tree (a hollow tree with a hole up high that was worn smooth around the edges) or a tree with a squirrel’s nest up

We practiced that skill both while hunting and while sneaking up on each other until, our bare feet noiseless on the woodland floor, we could move as silently as an Indian is reputed to be able to do without disturbing the branches and sparse undergrowth through which we moved.  It became second nature to pick the best route and avoid setting a foot down on a dry twig that might snap.

The ability came in handy at other times, too.  I recall one time that I had taken little brother Rex with me to the “Big Rock Hole” on Maze Creek to fish and to practice in the woods.  I got lucky and caught the largest fish I had ever seen come out of Maze Creek.  It looked like a chub, but must have been ten or more inches long.

After catching the fish, I decided to go home by way of Grandpa’s store figuring to show off my fish and that maybe he would give us each a bottle of strawberry or grape NeHi pop since it was a very hot afternoon.

About halfway to the road we (Rex trailing along behind) came around a bend and were suddenly face to face with two strange men coming along the path.  I knew they were not locals.  They were wearing pants with belts instead of overalls and they carried fancy rods and reels.  We in North Morgan Township were more than a bit reserved with, and maybe a bit distrustful of, “strangers.”  That meant anyone who came from more than four or five miles away.

The men halted and admired my “big” fish.  One of them said to the other, “See, I told you there were some nice fish in Maze Creek, Jake.”  Turning to me he said, “Where did you catch him, boy?”

I jerked the thumb of my free hand over my shoulder, “Back there a ways.”  Rex in the meantime was peering at the strangers from behind me.

“What did you use for bait?”

“Worm.”

“Ain’t much of a talker, are you?” he said.  “Tell you what—we haven’t caught much of anything.  I will give you a dime for that there fish.”

I was still thinking of showing off that fish to Grandpa and taking it home for Mother to cook.  I simply shook my head.

“Oh hell,” he said, “I might even give you a whole quarter.”  He turned to his partner, “Jake, you got a quarter on you?”

There was a small break in the underbrush to my right.  While Jake was feeling in his pockets for a quarter and the other man was watching him, I nudged Rex and faded quietly into the underbrush with my little brother at my heels.  We moved a few yards then knelt down well concealed.  I put a finger to my lips for Rex to be quiet.

We could hear the mean clearly in the still, warm air.  One of them exclaimed, “What the hell!  Where did they go?!”

“Aw,” the other answered, “these hill kids are shy as barn cats—one minute you see them, the next you don’t.  Guess he didn’t want to sell that there fish.”

We sat silently as we listened to them move on up the path, their voices fading as one of them said, “Downright spooky, that’s what.  I never heard a sound but when I looked around, they just weren’t there!”

That made me feel proud and not mind being called a hill kid because that was the whole idea—to simply vanish into the woods without a sound.

“Whyn’t you sell him that old fish,” Rex asked.  “You could have had a whole quarter and we could have bought a bottle of pop for just a nickel of it!”

“Didn’t want to.  Come on, let’s cut up over the bluff and go home.

Amusements in the Ozarks during the Great Depression

Conrad and Richard going fishing

Youngsters today would be at a loss to amuse themselves without their cellphones, computers, and televisions.  Several years ago some of the first reality programing on television was done by PBS, Frontier House in 2002.  The premise was to place a few families in the “wilderness” where they would have to live like pioneers. I hate reality programing, but watching these families come undone was fascinating.  It certainly showed the disconnect between our roots and our now.  The 1930s Ozarks were not that far from the pioneers.

Our amusements were naive and simple but I do not recall that us kids ever lacked for something interesting to do.  We never heard of Little League and, back in those country hills, there were no Boy Scout Troops.  Richard and I did have a tattered copy of the Boy Scout Manual that we learned a lot of useful things from, but mostly all we lacked was enough time to do all the things we would like to do.  I do not remember ever being bored.

During the hot summer a principal activity was to go to the creek, do some fishing, and have a swim.  There were no game wardens in the hills until later years and our tackle was very simple.  We had seen pictures of rods and reels in the Sears Roebuck wish book but no one had one.  Instead, for a quarter at Grandpa’s store we could buy a complete fishing line.  It was ten or twelve feet of green line, a small sinker, a long-shank hook just right for small catfish and perch, and a cork bobber.  Such a “store bought” fishing line came wound on a little wood frame that fitted very snugly in a back pocket of those bib overalls.

Bait for the little catfish and sunperch in Maze Creek was no problem.  We often dug big worms from the rotting manure pile behind the barn.  An ideal bait can to carry them in was either a Sir Walter Raleigh or Prince Albert empty flat tobacco tin.  That, too, fitted snugly in a back pocket.

If we had not taken time to dig worms or did not find some right away, we could always catch some grasshoppers in the pasture on Bertha Beck’s farm on our way to the creek.  A perfect receptacle for those was that button pocket on the bib of our overalls.  Of course sometime we forgot and left some in there later which did not make Mother very happy when our overalls showed up in the laundry.

Neither was a fishing pole a problem.  Along the creek bank there was lots of underbrush from which we could cut a fairly straight pol seven or eight feet long.  Willow made a good fishin’ pole and there were others that were nice and limber, too.  We always cut a fresh pole each time because a dry pole gets brittle and might break just when you had a big one on.  That was never a problem because in small Maze Creek a “big” catfish might be seven inches long and most of the sunperch were smaller than your hand.  We kept everything we caught even if they were hardly bigger than a pumpkin see.

We would put the fish we caught on a stringer (a switch cut from a bush) and keep them fresh in the water, then carry them proudly home and spend maybe an hour tediously cleaning them.  My mother would roll them in yellow cornmeal and fry them in a black iron skillet.  Some of them hardly made two bites, but they were delicious.

A more major source of meat for the family table, especially in early summer when the young were almost grown, was squirrels and rabbits.  About the time we moved into that little house south of Bona, when I was about eleven and Richard thirteen, Dad bough a little Remington 22-caliber squirrel rifle.  It was a dandy—a slim little single-shot rifle with a rolling block breech and a barrel about thirty-two inches long.  When we used long rifle shells (we used shorts for practice because they were cheaper) that little rifle was remarkably accurate up to forty or fifty years, which was about as far as you could see the eye of a squirrel.

Richard and I both quickly became very proficient with that little rifle.  One of our target practice competitions was to stick a row of kitchen matches in the bark of a down long, then, from fifteen or twenty yards, see who could light the most matches without knocking them out of the log.  The trick was to shoot so that the bullet just missed the head of the match, but came close enough that the air friction would ignite the phosphorous on the tip of the match.

When hunting rabbits with that little twenty-two, we did not feel bad when we hit on in the body.  After all, a rabbit can run pretty fast and it takes a pretty good shot to hit him anywhere on the run.  We never considered using a shotgun for either rabbits or squirrels for three reasons: One, it was not sporting, two the scattered shot spoils some of the meat, and three, we were not allowed to carry Dad’s single-shot 12-guage shotgun until we were older.  Apparently Dad felt that shotguns were too dangerous for youngsters.  If we had accidentally shot ourselves in the foot with the twenty-two it would only make a small hole but a shotgun was potential disaster.

It goes without saying that most parents aren’t going to hand their child a 22 rifle and tell them to go amuse themselves.  And of course, my grandfather had taught his boys how to handle a gun safely. The gun wasn’t a toy, although honing their shooting skills would soon come in handy in preserving my dad’s and uncle’s lives, as it did for some many of the greatest generation.  It also put food on the table.

Life without modern conviences.

As I go about my day, cooking and cleaning I marvel at my grandmother.  At the risk of repeating myself, I have to say how much I admire Eva Lorraine Frieze.  She was a scrupulously clean housekeeper and I don’t know how she did it without running hot water.  Whenever I grumble at having to do down to the basement to do laundry I remind myself that when she was a young mother she had to tote the water, heat it on a woodstove inside or a fire outside, and scrub the clothes and linens on a scrub board, then hang the clothes up and hope they got dry before a thunder or snow storm.  I have hot water on-demand to a nice electric washing machine and a dryer, all inside, albeit in the basement.  Moreover, I don’t have to go outside to a smelly outhouse night or day (although I have on my uncle’s farm), worrying about spiders in the holes! 

Another major difference in life in the Ozarks in those days (and, at one time, everywhere) and the way it is now, was that we lived with almost a complete lack of plumbing.  Almost no one had running water in the house.  There was always a counter in the kitchen that held a water bucket and wash pan.  A towel would be on a nail for rack nearby.  The only water for washing, cooking, doing the dishes, and drinking was what we carried in the water bucket from the well.  I recall that our water bucket was made of oak.  Dad always said that water tasted better out of oak and he had an oak water keg to take out into the fields with him.

When one wanted a drink of water, everyone simply used a long handled dipper that was kept in the bucket.  Of course that was the reason that when someone got sick most likely everyone else in the family were liable to catch it also.  To wash our faces and hands before supper, we just ladled some water into the wash pan and the last one to use it threw it out.  Hot water came from a teakettle always kept on top of the black iron wood-burning cook stove in which a fire was kept up all day usually.

A few houses—like the old home place and that of my Uncle Claud Frieze—had water tanks in the attic that were supplied by a hydraulic ram down in a branch below a spring.  They had pipes coming down to a faucet in the kitchen so that at least there was running cold water and they did not have to tote a bucket from the well.  We, however, just had the bucket.  That was kind of a nuisance for Saturday night baths when it was cold and we had to bathe in a washtub by the kitchen stove.  It also meant that we had to carry and heat a lot of buckets of water on Monday when my mother did the laundry in the washtub with a scrub board.

We managed to stay reasonably clean—at least by the standards of the time.  Mother always made us wash not only the front part of our faces, but also our neck and ears in the evening.  In the summer when we went barefoot all the time, we had to pour a pan of water and wash our feet before we got into bed.

Baths were not always necessary in the summer because, after a day in the dusty fields, we could always pull off our clothes and jump into the horse tank down by the barn.  Otherwise, if we had been swimming in the creek that was as good as having a bath—almost.  It was before the day of deodorants, of course, and I am sure we all usually had some degree of body odor about us.  It was not noticeable, though, unless someone had skunk odor on him or had gotten too dirty around the barn.

Not having plumbing meant that there was no such thing as a bathroom in the house.  Every house had an outhouse somewhere out back.  The outhouse was a small wooden building about five feet square built over a pit away from the well or the house.  Most were two-holers; a large hole for adults and a little one for kids.

Public buildings, such as the church and Bona School, had two outhouses—one for boys and one for girls—that were larger.  At Bona School the boys’ outhouse had four holes because sometime there was more than one of us at a time in there at recess.  I sup[pose the girls’ had four holes also, although I never went in there to see.

A country outhouse was a fine place to sit and think while you did your business when the weather was mild in the spring and fall.  Toilet paper was usually last year’s Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog so, if you had nothing better to think about, you could sit and look at the pictures in the “wish book.”

During the hot summer, however, the outhouse stunk to high heaven even though everyone usually kept a sack of lime in there to throw some in after you did a job.  You were certainly not inclined to linger.  In fact, in good weather it was a lot more comfortable to drop your overalls and squat out behind the barn or the chicken house or else out in the woods.

It was in the winter that the outhouse was a real anathema, especially when it had snowed and was windy.  Never came across an outhouse that was not drafty.  The worst problem was when you had to go at night.  Seems like invariably I would get out there and find that someone had left the door open so that there was a layer of snow on the seat.

Outhouses were fair game when Halloween came around.  In those days we did not know anything about “trick or treat.”  It was simply a time when evil spirits were supposed to be out and about.  All we thought of were tricks to pull on people.  Tipping over outhouses was a favorite, if not hallowed, Halloween trick.  Our ambition was to tip over an outhouse onto the door with someone inside so they could not get out.  We never managed it.  I think everyone knew that outhouses were fair game on Halloween so no one would go inside one after dark that evening. 

Look tomorrow for more amusements.