Tupelo Outhouse

Tupelo Outhouse or is it Hillbilly Initiation


The south is where we took summer vacations. The south is also where I learned about my blood, my faith, and what life was all about. Things I counted very simple soon became things that I treasured and never took for granted. This particular item, the commode, is what all of us take for granted but not me. There was a time in my life where I would have kissed the commode to have my butt sitting on it instead of an outhouse, the evening pot, or the outside. When Hank William’s Jr. sings the song “A Country Man will Survive” he isn’t just whistling Dixie, dear friends, he is telling it like it is. Southern people are strong, determined creatures. They treasure this life and respect the life they’re going to, referring to heaven, as home. This is what this story is all about. The blood running through my veins is southern through and through. I may have been born in the north but when you have southern blood traveling through your body you are indeed different and the best diverse I’ve seen in my life time.

My family is from the south and Mother’s friends all lived in different areas of the south. So vacation times meant Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama as travel spots.

Growing up in the inner city of Detroit was quite an experience but we had indoor plumbing. After this particular summer in Tupelo there were many things I took for granted but never would I look at a toilet the way I do now. I have a great esteem for a toilet and the simplicity of turning on a faucet. Now I hold these possessions dearly. How could you possibly live without the necessity of a universal commode? Even a tub and a shower became an honored treasure after a few weeks in Tupelo, Mississippi. This is where one of the greatest women on Earth lived, that meek lady being my great-grandmother, Allie Berryhill.

Great Grand maw’s time was a down-to-earth time where nothing seems to be done in a hurry. When the world became complex she continued to stay the same with her simple existence in her home in Tupelo, Mississippi. As a child I learned to spell it, humpback i, double s, i double s i, double p i, which was actually harder to do than essentially learning to spell it the right way. At her home, time stood still. There was no such thing as daylight savings time; great grand maw kept her time the same year round. The only time she followed the world’s time, was on church days and nights she would just leave an hour earlier or later whatever the case would be. Jesus was her savior and she followed Him. I believe until this day that her days were long on earth because of the simplicity of her life. She lived way up into her eighties. She bore ten children and I think towards the end of her child bearing years she and her husband began to run out of names for their “younguhs“. There was Exie, Ollie, Mattie, Tessie, Essie, Anna Lee, Marie, Vardimin (named after a town in Mississippi), Son, and Charlie.

I have to paint you a picture of the house she lived in her entire married life and beyond being a widow, and until her death in 1971. Her house consisted of three rooms with a dogtrot down the center, later named a breeze way so that it would sound more up town. The house was made of a wood that had turned gray from age, not from paint. It just looked really like an old barn with crooked steps. It had a plain tin roof, not a fancy metal one that is so popular these days. On one side of the house was a bedroom with ten iron bedsteads with feathered mattresses. This is where all the children slept. The dogtrot was located in the center of the home where the limited amount of action took place. This was the meeting place. You would sit there for hours on the weathered worn benches and talk. Mostly about days gone by but an occasional ghost story really caught my attention. Until the real facts appeared and the ghost was just a horse who appeared to be a man with a dress shirt and tie. The horse had a white chest with a long, black spot in the middle that looked like a tie. This was the only entertainment and amusement it was; I can only reminisce about these days of sitting on the porch telling stories. Sometimes I have a deep desire to go back to that time as most people often do in this time of life when it is running so fast you can’t keep up. Great grand maw’s simple life seems irresistible in this stage of life.

Great Grand maw had electricity but no television or radio. At the age of nine this should have been consider a very boring place in comparison to what I was used to, such as games, television, record player, etc. But just the mere fact that you had to be imaginative to create entertainment just made things a little more grander than just plopping beside the tube and watching I Love Lucy reruns. The sounds at night were beautiful to my young ears. I wanted to know what every creature was, owls, frogs, crickets, all made their noises at night. My favorite sound was the whippoorwill which my Aunt Jean, Mom’s sister could sound just like one! They would talk to each other as night fell around us. It was so dark too! I had never seen so many stars in all my life. I guess I just didn’t notice them in the city. There were no streetlights in those backwoods of Tupelo. So much for saying the night was quiet, it wasn’t and if you looked outside at night it looked like little eyes were watching you from everywhere.

Tupelo was full of insects, nature, butterflies, stick bugs, June Bugs, Granddaddy long legs plus red clay mud that I seem to be able to mold into all kind of things. My imagination was on a high alert and was more valuable than all the luxuries of home. Great Grand maw had a fly swat and this was the most amazing thing. She would warp a fly on top of the head and tell me to watch carefully. One of their fly friends would come and revive them as if she did not kill them all the way. This amazed me but not quite as amazed, as I became at night when the lightening bugs came out to grace us with their presence. I thought these insects were very smart misquotes that came out at night with flashlights to locate their prey. I truly was so astounded with the creatures that I decided to take a few back up north with me to populate the city with them. I simply got one of grand maw’s snuff cans that was glass and put holes in the top of the tin top but they escaped somewhere around Kentucky when going back home. Mom said it was a good thing they escaped they never would have survived in the city. All I thought about how lovely Detroit would be with lightening bugs to bring life into the city. After all, these bugs had to be magic. In addition, I, Diane Farris, would be famous for bringing these bugs into the city. In my little mind, I thought everyone would adore me because I did this gracious deed. However, that is another story.

Great grand maw even made me a doll from a corn husk and it had the silkiest hair I had ever felt. She made me feel so loved because she thought I was a special child because we both shared our simple faith in Christ. Great grand maw loved to hear me sing the songs I had learned in church and when I went home I remember doing a paint by number set of Christ and I sent them to her. She was so proud and displayed them for all her visitor’s to see on her dresser.

On the other side of the dogtrot was great grand maw’s room. It had a huge feathered bed with a wood burning stove in there for heat. The small pot bellied stove I was sure could not have kept a single room warm much less the whole house. Next to that was the kitchen. Oh, how I loved that kitchen. Although it lack a real necessity, running water! The table was a huge picnic table because you never knew how many people would show up for meals. There was a stunning black and white wood burning stove where you could smell wood burning year round because this was the only means of cooking. A pie safe was where pies cooled for eating after the evening meal. This white cabinet had wired mesh instead of glass like your fancy china cabinets of today to keep the bugs from coming in to eat the pies. Let us not forget the finest big aluminum bathtub behind the stove intended for taking a bath when not in use for washing clothes. It was huge and I will never forget the smell of wood burning and ivory soap. I cannot take a bath today with ivory soap without thinking of my days at great-grand maw’s house in Tupelo, the smell will overwhelm me and then I am nine years old again with my first introductions to the southern way of life. A life I began to love at such an early stage. I took for granted that I had southern blood running through my veins and where ever you placed me I would always be a southerner even though I was born and reared in the north.

In the description of the house, you can see we are missing one of the biggest additions to a home, the bathroom. Great-grand maw had a bathroom but it was not located on her property. It was an outhouse that belong to the Baptist church a forth of a mile down the road. Great Grand maw went to church there and that‘s also where she used the bathroom. You know what else? That outhouse was only about ten feet from the graveyard. How could they? I had a feeling Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t quite collaborate the planning in this first stages of outhouses. An outhouse next to a cemetery? Also, you need to know being an only child; only grandchild and only niece made me a well read nine year old.

Let me explain something at this point because I know you are scratching your heads in wonder. If you did number one you could just go outside in the woods but your number 2 duty was done in this outhouse. Also a forth of a mile is a long way in the humid south to walk when the urge hit. I was a very determined young lady though I knew I could last until we got into town to do number 2. I had personally taken a long distance gaze at the outhouse with the door opened but I dared not step inside. Not only was the smell enough to kill a horse but the deep dark opening that you would sit on was surrounded by boards that didn’t look like they had ever seen paint either. If you didn’t get bit by a snake or get a splinter full in your butt you’d be mighty lucky. Also, I could only imagine what other kind of varmints lived in this little house. It frightens me to think of what kind of story Twilight Zone would have conjured up from this one contraption. No, I was accustoming to a clean, white, enamel toilet that held water and then you would flush. There was no way that I was going to put my tiny butt on that round circle. I just knew if I did, there was a snake coiled up just waiting to shoot its poisonous venom into my white, delicate buttocks. Later, when I told wrote a shorter version of this story to put on the family website they said that a snake wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those holes. According to them, they broke that Yankee (being me!) in real good. At nine years of age I didn’t even want to use the bathroom in a rest area if someone happened to throw a cigarette in the toilet. I was a little picky, I can say, but after a few vacations in the south I grew more adapt to things. I still to this day think an outhouse was for heathens not civilized people who knew better. I felt so sorry for my Great grand maw. Although she took pleasure in the walk to the outhouse because it was there she said she could talk to God. She said she would thank him all the way for giving her the necessities of life and the times with her family. She was thankful for the smallest things like the beautiful birds and wildflowers that all worked together for the good earth she said. This little woman no taller than four foot 10 inches was so wise. I had so much to learn. My wisdom was rather lacking compared to those around me.

Well, I thought I was an expert at age nine at being able to hold my number 2 until we went to town in a few days but it didn’t quite happen that way. Sad but true grand maw had become low on her jugs of water she had to haul from her son’s house down the way. It was our job since grand maw was preparing dinner which was really lunch but called dinner but looked like supper. Don’t ask questions by the end of my book you’ll know all of this or perhaps a southern dictionary in the back would help. Okay gallon jugs of water from a spiket (also known as a water facet) wouldn’t be hard work and loading the jugs in the back of the car. It wasn’t but little did my mind know that when I began carrying those jugs of water my poor intestines couldn’t help but contract and want to release the waste I had accumulated in two days. Number 2 was going to happen really fast. I called to my Mom for help.

“Hey, Mom could you stop a minute? I have to ask you an important question? I mean this is an emergency.”

“This better be good,” she said with a hint of laughter in her voice. She knew that I had been holding “it” for a long time because of the outhouse.

“Mom, I really have to go to the bathroom and its number 2.” What am I going to do? How far is it into town?”

“Waited too late, little lady, town is a good 45 minutes from son’s house. You are going to have to go to the woods,” she said.

“Go to the woods! Do you think I’m crazy? How will I wipe my butt? Have you got any toilet paper in the car?”

“Nope, no toilet paper.” Looks like you’ll have to look around the woods for something. If worse comes to worse you can always use leaves,” Mom said with even more laughter. Her humor in this was becoming annoying to say the least. This was for a nine year old a very desperate situation.

“Mom, this isn’t one bit funny.”

“Diane, I told you this morning when we drove to the outhouse at the church to use it and you didn’t. “Sometimes when in France you do as the French do, “Mom stated like it was a fact that we could use in Tupelo. I knew as old as a country as France was, surely they had toilets that flushed but what they had to do with Tupelo I had no idea!

“Okay, you win; I’ll have to go but where?”

“Just a good ways behind the house,” she said, bellied over laughing. I knew I’d never live this one down.

Well, I went behind the house to a spot in the woods where a paper sack was waiting for me! I thought to myself there is a God and thanks be to Him for He had not forgotten me in my time of need. A sack would be better than nothing or better than leaves. It would be just my luck as naïve as I was that I would use poison ivy leaves out of all the others I had to choose from. I squatted down and did my business like a dog then wiped my butt with the paper sack. Well, I stood up and said, “I’m one of them now. A true southerner, maybe born in the north but the southern blood was running full force in my veins. Not only did I use the bathroom; but outside like a wild animal. I knew it was all over with now.” Everyone would have something to talk about that night. My first in a series of hillbilly initiations but certainly not my last one. A kind of “coming out” party like the gentle southern belles have for proper introductions, only without the fancy gown. This was definitely not proper me with my shorts pulled down squatting over a log. I haven’t been the same since but I wouldn’t change it for the world! The poor south has had to put up with me every since that life changing experience in the woods of Tupelo, Mississippi. Just think I probably did number 2 right on a piece of land where Elvis Presley played as a child. Hey, doesn’t that nearly make me famous?