Ye Old Outhouse - News about Outhouses

From the News outhouse

Here are clippings from newspapers that friends have sent me. Keep them coming! If you have something to send me, please give me the date and paper name that it came from.

Come to Lancaster County's First-ever "Outhouse Tour," Sunday, May 20, at 2 p.m..

Yes, outhouses still do exist. People keep them, preserve them, decorate them inside and out and use them as part of their landscape.

The tour begins at the Lancaster Career and Technology Center, Old Market Street, with a slide show and exhibit of miniature outhouses and books on the subject.

Mount Joy Sesquicentennial 1851 - 2001, Lancaster PA

Outhouse collapse victim agrees to accept help

The Associated Press

Wytheville - A 75-year-old man who spent three days trapped in the bottom of his outdoor toilet has finally agreed he needs more modern facilities.

Coolidge Winesett had repeatedly rejected a state agency's offer to build a bathroom in his 90-year-old home in Ivanhoe.

Then on Aug. 12, the outhouse floor collapsed and Winesett fell 5 feet to the bottom. He was rescued three days later when a mail carrier, concerned that Winesett's mail was piling up, went looking for him.

Maxine Waller, a community organizer for Southeast Rural Community Assistance Project, persuaded Winesett to accept the offer of indoor plumbing.

"Maxine and themget behind something, something's got to give," Winesett said last week from his bed at Wythe County Community hospital, where he is recovering from circulatory problems and infected wounds from six- and eight penny nails.

Winesett will get more than just a new bathroom. Houses that get plumbing must meet state codes. Since Winesett's house is so dilapidated, the agency will build a new, two-bedroom home on his property and tear down the old house.

Meanwhile, Winesett is dealing not only with his injuries but also with public attention stemming from his ordeal. News stories about Winesett's plunge to the bottom of the outdoor privy appeared as far away as England and Scotland.

"I wish there was someother way I could get so popular," Winesett said. "That's an insult to my ego."

Locally, Winesett was well known before last month's incedetn for his fiddling prowess. His band, the Virginia-Carolina Buddies, was a fixture at music festivals throughout the region two decades ago.

His house remains a favorite stop for the student groups Waller coordinates to perform volunteer work in Ivanhoe and other areas.

"He'd sit on the porch and play his fiddle and talk to them about life," Waller said. "Every year, we'd ask them, 'What do you want to do?' They'd say, 'Well, we really want to see Coolidge.'"

Similarly, documentary crews that for the past dozen years have recorded Ivanhoe's revitalization efforts stopped to tape Winesett playing and talking.

A book about Ivanhoe, "It Comes From the People: Community Development and Local Theology," devoted most of a chapter to Winesett's thoughts on religion. His song, "Carbide Men," about the Union Carbide plant where his father and most everyone else in Ivanhoe once worked, became the theme of the Jubilee festival, a community celebration held each July 4.

In 1984, a stroke partially crippled Winesett and ended his out-of-town performances. But musicians kept coming to play on Winesett's porch.

Waller said there is no reason for that tradition to end. Although the grant for the nw house will not pay for a front porch, private donations will, and Winesett can continue to share his stories and his music.

"I know one thing," Winesett said with a grin. "I ain't going to make no song about that toilet."

....my comment - I think he should!

Honorable Mention
"What's Taking So Long?"
Doris Kiefer, Millersville

I don't know what contest this was from, and I'm sorry I mixed it up with all my clippings, so I don't even know who sent it to me...