With the Winter Olympics coming up in Sochi, a story has come out about the side by side toilets in that Russian resort, which is something unheard of in Canada.
That brings to mind the outhouse that Wally constructed before he and Auntie Kay got an indoor toilet.

The structure was placed on the south end of the pear orchard and at the east end of where the table grapes and current bushes grew. The distance from the house was about 75 feet.The outhouse sat north east of the farm house. The outhouse was slightly larger than your run of the mill privy. There was more standing room as well as more sitting room. There were two holes cut for your convenience, one smaller than the other. Both were covered with nice seats that you could raise if needed. You could take your child in with you and you both could go.

The entry door was higher that the landing outside of it, so Wally cut a window large enough in it to allow daylight to flood the interior, without the occupant(s) being seen, unless there was someone working on a ladder in the orchard.That window helped to air out the unit. I don’t remember it ever stinking like some of the outhouses I’ve been in, but by the time I came along it wasn’t in use every day either. To top it all off, Wally shingled the roof and put plaster on the sides which cut off those cold winter winds allowing you to be in a draft free environment.

In summer, a pear tree shaded it keeping it cool from the hot, afternoon sun. The fruit pickers enjoyed the relative comfort of that building as well.As a child, it wasn’t a big event having someone on the toilet beside me, I can only hope that the foreign adults in Sochi are as comfortable as I was.