We had an in-use outhouse, growing up. Although we also had one indoors, complete with plumbing and all of the niceties, the outdoor one was put into use during winter water pipe freezes or when we need to use the facilities without having to wipe our feet to go indoors. We also had a pumpable pump in the yard. I think I can remember when we first got indoor plumbing, although my older brother says that it was there before I was born, so it's possible that what I remember was a large-scale repair project after a particularly cold winter. Our camp, of course, had an outhouse.
Very much the same for me growing up. Even after we had indoor plumbing, my dad used the outhouse to save on the septic tank getting bogged down. As a young adult, I had an outhouse while building my cabin and years later when a septic tank was added and an indoor toilet I still kept my outhouse until they moved the forest service road and creek over 30 feet and that put my outhouse too close to a creek. Rather than argue that it was grandfathered in, I filled it with diesel-soaked old newspaper and torched it. It made an impressive burn. It had been over one deep hole for10 years. All their concerns about it polluting the high table water that fed the creek, went up in smoke.
My great grandparents had indoor plumbing installed in the farmhouse when I was 8 or so. Great grandma was so proud of her pink toilet, sink and bathtub but great grandpa refused to use it to his dying day. He didn't approve of the "indoor outhouse" being so close to his bedroom. I was delighted to not have to use the outhouse when we'd go to visit after that. Prior to that, I'd walk up the road to my cousin's house to use their "indoor privy".
When I spent the summer with my grandparents on top of the mountain in Missouri they let me paint the out house. I painted bright pink .
Last out house I saw was at my Aunt and Uncle's 50 acres in Arkansas. It was about 10 or 15 miles to Pocahontas and 24 miles from the Missouri state line. Rolling hills and lots of Fox hunters that would let the dogs out at sun down and you could follow the chase in stereo because it lasted all night long. They had an old farm house two story and a the original early 1900s house behind that two story. The old single story looked like a typical one room house of the 1800s and it had been used later as a smoke house. There was only pump water in the big two story but they never lived in either house, they had a small trailer they lived in. The out house for the big house was waaaayyy out back from the big house and they rented the house to a young couple. The man was a log hauler and you never seen him much he was always working. When I would visit I slept in the smoke house, there was also a storm shelter just on the other side of the smoke house. When the Uncle died my Aunt moved back to Houston and they just gave the entire place the 50 acres and the Houses to the man and his wife. I have tried to re find the place on google earth but of course it is now all paved roads not the old dirt rock roads that were there at the time. I tried guessing by using Pocahontas and the 24 mile northern line which was the best point to search since I know for a fact they were just that 24 miles away. I would go with the Uncle to shop and they shopped at the Piggly Wiggly in Pocahontas. You would think it would be easy to find an old homestead with that much information but not really.
I have never heard of a "biffy." I remember from the old TV show "Laugh-In", they used the expression "bet your sweet bippy." I didn't know what that meant, either.
I did not enjoy the nighttime or early morning trips to the outhouse during the winter, particularly if I was the one who had to break ground after a snow storm. The outhouse was not in close proximity to the house.
The secret to using an outhouse on a cold day is to learn to hold it until someone else warms the seat. That valuable knowledge from childhood didn't do me much good living alone.
My Grandparents had an outhouse on the farm which I vividly remember because of a cantankerous rooster which used to chase me into the derned thing and then wait for me to come out. That said, I doubt if anyone but a vet can remember doing their business in a 10+ seater. It was the one place when soldiers got together that there wasn’t a whole lot of talking going on. Look, it’s a bird, it’s a plane! Nope. It’s a CH-34. Door gunners in the door and mini-guns fully armed to protect and carry yet another 10 seater to another location near you.
The secret to using an outhouse on a cold day is to have a sheet of styrofoam, preferably 1 in. thick, with a hole cut out that matches the outhouse hole. In the old days, it was a scrap of an old blanket with a hole in it to insulate your backside from cold, wet, moldy or otherwise unpleasant wood.
No, the secret was to have a block of wood to use as a step stool to enable squatting over the hole, eliminating the need to actually sit on the outhouse hole, to begin with, but none of this stuff gets you out there and back, through the snow and the cold, without misery in the winter.
When I moved to this rural area in 2010, one of the places I looked at had a hybrid. The house was built in the 1700s, so the electricity and the kitchen plumbing were obviously retrofit. The bathroom was plumbed, but it was not inside the house. It was a small exterior room with a toilet, a sink and a shower stall that was built against the back of the house, like an attached shed. You walked out the back door of the house, stepped into the yard, took a hard right, and walked through an exterior door into the bathroom. I won't say I came real close to buying the place, but I loved the architecture of the main house. And it sat on 96 acres. But it was a money pit. And by that age, I was not into chamber pots.
I remember only one time in the evening hour that I trekked to the outhouse of my grandparents. I was probably 4 or 5 years old. It was set way, way back from the house. That is the only memory that I have of the outhouse and it was scarry but adventurous at the same time. I don't recall any one going with me which strikes me now 'Just how safe it was for me to be out there 'alone?' Whenever I go into the facilities at the flea market I always remember 'the outhouse' because that's what it feels like.
My most recent ruminations on outhouses made me remember there was an actor, vaudevillian and writer named (Charles) Chic Sale, who wrote a play and book called The Specialist. It is a short play/story about a fictitious outhous builder - just simple folksy humor that would remind you of Lake Wobegon monologues. Humorist Jean Shepard did a two part reading of the story, which Sale would tell on stage.