Outlaws and Outhouses

I was walking around the yard the other night checking out flower beds to see what’s popping and what is not.  Around the garage and central boiler, I have a crop of heirloom hollyhocks.  The seeds I planted years ago came from Captain’s mom who got them from her mom who grew them back at the family farm.  So there is a generational connection there.  

Did you know that hollyhocks are biennials, meaning they only bloom every two years?  Luckily, when we got the seeds from Captain’s mom, we got enough so that we get blooms every year:  one year we get pink and white flowers, and the other year we get magenta flowers.  

Back in the day, hollyhocks were planted on just about every homestead as a way to camouflage the outhouse because they get up to 7 feet tall and could pretty easily shroud the ugliness of the facilities.  Of course, in these modern days, we don’t need to use them for that purpose, but they do make nice camouflage for fences and such.  

Speaking of outhouses, they were sort of a big part of my childhood.  Not because we actually had one that we had to use.  No, it was an entertainment activity for my dad and his cronies.

Between Dad and his two best friends, they could come up with mischief schemes like noboby’s business, but always in a light-hearted and never mean-spirited way.  Except for that one top-secret thing that I will share with you if and when the records are ever declassified.

So, very often, their mischief of choice was to go out after dark, load an old outhouse in a pickup, and take it to someone’s house where they would sit in the yard blowing the horn until lights came on in the house and someone came out.  

The rules of the game were easy:  if you gave them beer, they wouldn’t leave the outhouse.  If you didn’t...well, there was going to be an outhouse in your yard!  Part of the fun, if they did end up leaving an outhouse somewhere, was going back to get it and having some more beer and visiting with the homeowners.  I remember hearing lots of stories as a child about their late night adventures.

Even as an adult, I get to hear about it because every time I see one of the participants, which is frequently as our network of mutual friends is huge, he tells the story of their late-night visit to my house.

I was a young newlywed with a home of my own.  I was standing at the kitchen sink one night washing dishes while Captain was taking a shower.  I saw lights coming down the street, which was odd because there were only a handful of houses on our street and all the occupants were already home and in their houses.  

Then I saw the lights turn in our driveway.  Oh fun, company!  Some of our first visitors as homeowners.  

Then--THEN--I saw the outhouse in the back of the pickup, and I saw three goofballs in the cab of the pickup all with shit-eating grins on their faces.  

Knowing full well the rules of the game, I yelled for Mike to put some clothes on and then ran for the fridge to grab three cans of beer, pop the tops, and head out the door to distribute it.  

Too late, they’d already unloaded the outhouse in my front yard.  

I figured I should have been exempt from this particular practical joke because my dad was part of the team and--hey--I followed the rules!  Nope, no such luck.

At any rate, we had a nice visit with three of my all-time favorite people for a couple of hours and several more beers all around.  

On their way out the door, they happened to see the old porcelain toilet that we had taken out when we remodeled the bathroom.  A deal was struck that they would take that one with them instead of the outhouse, and we could do with the outhouse what we wanted.  And off they went.

Turns out they stopped at another neighbor’s house on their way home in full Game Mode, blowing the horn in the yard in the middle of the night, and wouldn’t you know they had another nice visit before they finally called it quits for the night.

So now I had an outhouse in my yard.  Hmmm...what to do with it.  I could have planted hollyhocks around it and kept it...made it a conversation piece of my landscaping.  

Who was I kidding?  I was Bigfoot’s daughter down to the bone.  I was going to pass it forward to someone else!  Captain and I drafted a high school friend of his and made a midnight run with it a few weeks later.  We secretly (no horn blowing for us) left it for Captain’s best friend in his driveway, which just happened to be on a busy intersection just outside of Pine Island so EVERYBODY saw it!

Eventually we retrieved it and returned it to it’s rightful owner so that HE had to come out with beer for ME, I might add!

My dad and his buddies might have had a unique approach to entertainment and mischief, but they never hurt anyone and it always provided them with some fun...a lot of fun, actually.  

We all need to make mischief and do fun stuff or what’s the point of living?  Whatever your choice of entertainment is, indulge it!  Just don’t hurt anyone in the process.