My mom spent much of her first ten years in a “small town.” She often had great stories of her home town in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Much of the area was farms and open area. The town she lived in is still small.
My mom had stories of having to use the outhouse. In the winter you just held it until the morning because it was too cold, dark, and bundling up would just wake you up. But there was one family in town who had indoor plumbing installed.
In my head, I saw my grandma pumping water with a hand pump in the kitchen. I am not sure if this is true, but I was little listening to these stories, and indoor plumbing is water access in the house. But indoor plumbing is also the lines out. And it isn’t like indoor plumbing was a new invention, my great grandfather had a house with it in the 1920s. But that is a story for another time.
Now, my mom’s story is that the people were so excited about getting flushing toilets, (not water access, but flushing toilets, not having to go out to the outhouse), that they had a toilet installed in the living room. As a child I imagined a toilet sitting in the middle of the living room, with a picture window so all could see the glory of not having to use the outhouse like everyone else. As an adult, I think it is more likely that the people installed a water closet, utilized a closet to place a toilet in. This would be easy to keep tucked away for privacy yet some where easy to bring people to show your indoor toilet.
Sometimes my child brain impresses me. It seems that my little brain always went to an extreme, not just a simple explanation. I saw the elephant not the strained emotions of awkward silence around a topic. I think this is something innocent about children. We see in our imaginations the most outlandish possibility. It is how we believe in Santa, or the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth fairy. As children there are no rules or boundaries to the possibilities.
