Indoor plumbing

Our Oregon farmhouse had electricity but no indoor plumbing. Well, technically, we had running water and a sink and a drain in the kitchen. That qualifies as indoor plumbing, I guess.

At first we had a hand pump to get water into the house. Later I think there was an actual faucet at the kitchen sink.

I recall Saturday night baths in a big metal tub on the kitchen floor with water heated in pans on the stove. Being one of the younger ones, I assume I normally bathed in used water near the end of the process. No problem then. Hey, I was a little boy. But I hate to think now of what that really meant—water that was no longer as warm as when it started out, water that was less than clean, water that was . . . .

Since there was no toilet in the house, we used an outhouse that moved from time to time to different spots around the yard. When one pit became filled, a new hole had to be dug, the old one covered up, and the outhouse placed over the new hole.

I can't imagine such an arrangement encouraged potty training in little boys. And wintertime trips to the outhouse were less than exciting, if we even bothered to trek all the way across the yard to the outhouse.

I was nine years old, nearly ten, before we moved to Idaho and to a house that had a bathroom with a toilet, a tub, and a sink. The modern era had begun.