Overflowing Outhouses (Cumberland Saga)

“You need to do something about the outhouses” Heddy told her husband Samson. “They are over-flowing.”

Samson recognized from the tone that pointing out that the outhouses would stop flooding when the rain stopped was NOT going to go over well. He imagined that Jesus himself was familiar with that tone if the Wedding at Cana story in the Bible had gone the way he pictured in his head.

Sighing, he said “Yeah, I need to walk around anyway. I might as well scope out the problems now.”

Heddy, “Jadwiga Sophia” in the family Bible, had engaged on a commando-strike shopping mission in the run-up to evacuating the home they were renting outside of Gastonia. Cloth diapers, plastic pants, safety pins, loose-fitting dresses and shoes in ascending sizes. Kitchen cutlery, twenty-pound bags of pinto-beans, spices….

Her purchases were informed by the memories of her childhood. For instance, she purchased children’s clothing in bright colors, the better to find them should they wander off chasing butterflies. The Cove was a very big place when you are a panicking parent looking for a wayward child.

What had been mercifully erased from her memories was the deplorable state of sanitation in Copperhead Cove. They had not progressed much beyond buckets, barrels and holes-in-the-ground. In their defense, there was very little that could be done with low-tech solutions and the thin layer of clay that overlaid the impermeable bedrock. It was the equivalent of a bird "white-washing" a fat-man's, sweaty, bald head on a very hot day.

All of which Samson confirmed in his walk-about in the rain. Having worked excavating and construction in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, he had picked up the ability to discern what was beneath ground.

But what he needed now was an expert. Maybe not in geology but in some quick bandages that could be slapped over the problem until better solutions could be found. Remembering a snippet of conversation he overheard, he decided this might be a good time to get to know Amira.

Going over to their new home, he knocked on the door and asked the young man who answered the door, “Is your mother home? If she is, I wonder if I can have some conversation with her.”

The young man did not answer but closed the door without saying a word. A surprised Samson waited a half minute, unsure of what to do. Finally Amira came to the door. Pointing at the wicker chairs beneath the awning, she indicated that he should sit.

Frankly, she was glad for the interruption. Being penned up in the house with Walter and the two boys was trying, especially since she was a “busy” by nature and enforced inactivity irked her. 

"Nice chairs" Samson said.

"We found them in a back room" Amira said. "The woman who lived here must not have entertained much."

“What do you want to talk about?” Amira got to the point.

“It seems like I heard somebody say that you used to work in a medical lab. I was wondering it that is true” Samson asked.

“Yes, I did. Our lab performed standard blood-work and other tests” Amira responded “Why do you ask?”

“My wife asked me to do something about the sanitation issues here. Specifically the outhouses. I need somebody to bounce ideas off of. I am hoping that might be you” Samson said.

Amira rolled her eyes at the mention of the outhouses. “We had outhouses in Bosnia but they were flower gardens compared to the ones here” Amira acknowledged.

“I am all about bang-for-the-buck” Samson started out. “It is not like we have a lot of money and at this point all of the labor is being used elsewhere.”

“So what I want to know is what can we do that is fast-and-easy while we figure out the long-hard-and-slow?” Samson concluded.

“You mean to make them smell better or to stop disease?” Amira asked for clarification.

“Mostly stopping the spread of disease. If more people show up, and I believe in my heart that will happen, they will add to the crowding and the overloaded system. Something is going to break” Samson said.

“Germs mostly spread from surface-to-surface” Amira started out. “In Bosnia we had wooden shoes we wore to the outhouse. We took them off and left them on pegs next to the porch so we didn’t track the filth into the house. That would be the first, and simplest thing to change.”

“It does no good to wash hands inside a bathroom if you have to touch the door handle with your hands to leave” Amira continued. "It just takes one person who does not wash their hands to contaminate the next ten people leaving the bathroom."

“Can the doors be changed so they are like the ones you see by the kitchen of a restaurant...they swing both ways and have no latch? Servers can push them open them with their elbows or bump them open with their butt. They don’t need to use their hands” Amira asked.

It took Samson a couple of seconds to visualize the kind of door she was describing...”Like the swinging doors of a Western saloon?” he suggested.

“Maybe, but weather-tight, for the winter” she said.

Samson nodded. It would be nearly impossible to seal the doors but the gaps could be small.

“Anything else?” Samson asked.

“A wash basin outside the lavatory” Amira added. “It has to be outside because sun sanitizes and because everybody will see who doesn’t wash their hands and it can be addressed.”

“It will freeze in the winter” Samson noted.

“And it will be fine in the spring, summer and fall. So you get ¾ of an answer” Amira dismissed his objection.

“How does the person refill the basin? Would there be a jug of water next to it? Isn’t that just another way to pass germs around?” Samson asked, trying to visualize how the wash station would be used.

“Moving water is a very old problem” Amira said. “Everybody had a different way of solving it but the Romans probably had the best answers. Their aqueducts are still being used today.”

The picture of water being delivered overhead popped into Samson’s head. Maybe put the jug over the basin and have a valve that could be stepped on to open it….

He was definitely going to have to make a trip into Athens to the big-box store and the Goodwill. While he could fabricate hinges and manufacture wooden clogs, factory-made solutions were readily available for both countermeasures and his wife implied a-need-for-speed.

While he was at the big-box store, he would look over the plumbing supplies and pray for inspiration.

Looking out at the rain which showed no signs of slowing down, Samson asked "I don't suppose you have any board-games? We have some jigsaw puzzles we could trade."

Grinning wryly, "Two-year-olds and jigsaw puzzles don't go together well."