Outhouses

It is cold winter night. Everybody in the house is asleep. I woke up, because I had to use a restroom. It was warm under the comforter and I didn't feel like to crawl out. If I will ignore it, maybe I will not have to go. That didn't work. It was getting stronger and stronger. "Sandy, Sandy", I call my older sister. "I have to go." "So go, you don't have to wake me up." "Come with me, I know you have to go also." "I am not going anywhere. Go by yourself." "I am scared." After long time, when my sister found out she will be not able to get rid of me, she moved out of the bed, and both of us, in the cold night, just in our nightgowns, walked outside. The outhouse was a part of a storage shed and the laundry building. Sandy used her right of an older sister and was first inside. I waited outside, jumped on one and then another leg, tried to keep myself warm and a need to use a restroom was becoming unbearable. Finally my sister was done and I could get inside. Sister waited for me outside,and when I was done, we ran back to the house and under the warmth of our comforters. I remembered this story when I visited coal mine village not far from Hazelton. There were abandoned outhouses behind the row of old houses. Nobody used them for long time. In the Schuylkill County I met my first doubleseeter. I liked it very much. I wouldn't have to wait outside in those cold winter nights of my childhood. The outhouses are part of our history also. Copyright (c) Marie Neumann Pottsville 11/30/2009