The Appalachian Outhouse Part 1

Photo Courtesy of Barbara Woodall. The owners named it Mrs. Murphy.

First, I want to start this article out by thanking Mr. +Johnny Depp  for mentioning his mother, Appalachia and outhouses. Johnny Depp's Mother is An Appalachian? is one of my most well read blog posts. The stereotype of outhouses and Appalachia is so predominate in our country, it is sad that Mr. Depp's use and perceptions are the norm instead of the exception. A perception that needs to be changed if we are ever going to solve the problems we have in Appalachia. I am really thankful that his popularity and his just mentioning it, is giving us a basis to talk about it and be heard.

This is going to be a two part blog post. This first part is just a discussion of the reasons we have relied on this system in Appalachia. The second part will be some stories of Appalachian outhouses from my family and my experiences.

 I don't know why the outhouse stereotype is so prevalent for Appalachia when you could find an outhouse or something similar as a necessary function for crap in every part of the world at one time or another. I personally think it is because we have been relegated to use them in Appalachia longer than most places.   The same stereotype doesn't seem to exist on outhouses say in the Colorado Rockies or in the Midwest in the same way. The reasons this is true could be a research paper.

I think it is just the Appalachian region itself is so close to much more populated areas in the East that any unusual thing out of the "modern" ordinary, like an outhouse, especially when I was growing up, stood out like a boil on the butt of humanity in our region.  I was always upset as a child when those from outside the region would ridicule, stereotype, or tell us we are backwards just because in our region we had outhouses and did without modern plumbing for so long. My family, for the most part, did not see it that way.

Some say our people were just "too poor" in our region to get rid of outhouses and put in proper plumbing. Working in the field of Appalachian history for a living, it was amazing to come across this stigma of thought that even many of our older residents still suffer from the shame and the thinking of that stereotype. Yes... in some instances lack of money might have been true.

If we had enough money to throw at the problem we possibly could have solved all of Appalachia's plumbing problems long ago. After all we sent men to the Moon, so most definitely we could pour massive amounts of money into Appalachia to put in defying feats of engineering, creating septic systems in challenging, inaccessible places with low populations....if we had the money of say Dubai.  Some say we should have had those riches with all the coal we sold but let's not go there.

But those of us from here know that Appalachia is a special place in more ways than one. We understand the main reason for our failure to keep up our plumbing with the rest of the world, in the oldest mountains in the U.S., for so long, is because of the mountains geological make up and geography. Why should we ever feel ashamed of things really beyond our control?

Knowing this place as I do, I'm not so sure all the money in the world would buy a good system for some of these places in our mountains. In our area, we have a river that appears to defy gravity and flows North up the Appalachian mountain chain. The New River. I learned in economic development of our area it has a great BIG effect in how you engineer a system. Number one rule for a sewer or septic system, crap runs down hill and we are fighting a water shed that is defying that.

Explaining this to newcomers to our area has been amusing. I mention that in the "Gentrification of Appalachia" another blog post. This is where folks move to our beautiful mountains and it has been amusing to watch their demands for septic and water and trash pickup. Usually in areas that it would be an engineering feat to put in a septic system in the first place and secondly, the population won't support many of the systems they are used to having in larger flat land populated areas.

After owning and renting many homes over the years in Appalachia I know it has nothing to do with being poor. It has to do with working with what you have, where you are!!! Many of us were glad if we bought property that would "perk" and drain to put a septic system in. Never mind the life of those systems is around 20 to 30 years if you are lucky and creates other problems. Many of us were lucky that their area of Appalachia is an area where a town could locate a sewer system to cover many homes. Yet those systems have their own unique problems still.

Personally I know the problems we have are unique. Especially after paying to sink 3 different wells and knowing the water table dropping can turn your sweet water into iron or sulfur if you don't dig it extra deep enough to allow for extreme droughts. After living with septic systems that gave out after 10 years being hooked up to a public water supply system that destroyed them and paying to have them pumped on a regular basis.... I personally know it's not money that is the problem. It's LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!  Especially the soil in my neck of the woods is ROCK with clay, limestone, granite and more rock!!!  You would not believe the rock (actually small boulders) that came out of the ground while digging a 40 foot water line.

It is so serious a problem that a lack of access to good water and septic closes down our economic development in many areas. Yet Appalachians are really resilient and we get creative trying to solve these problems. We have a modern version of an outhouse that you would not know exists in many areas when you visit a bathroom at a modern business. It's called pump and haul. It's just a tank in the ground that you hire someone to pump and haul the contents to the closest sewer plant when it gets full. One business I worked for that haul was 40 miles away.

I was going to take a picture of one of my favorite little watering holes. It's a Cabin that is a bar called the "Bulls eye". They had outhouses out back. Found out in recent years they were forced to put a septic system in. Think it's pump and haul. Anyway their outhouses are now cinderblock mansions.

My point is we are fighting a stereotype that exists because of the geography of our mountainous hollers.  We should never be ashamed in this day and age for having an outhouse in any way.  Many modern situations still use outhouses in other areas of the country and the stereotype of Appalachians being backwards or ignorant because of our people ever used an outhouse needs to go AWAY!!! It's not true and never was.

 I love that you can find how to build and maintain one on the internet.

In Part II are my stories of our outhouse exploits.  The link is Appalachian Outhouse stories - Build it Downwind

Johnny Depp's Mother is Appalachian? What Does This Mean to Be An Appalachian?

All photos on this page are from my family albums. This is my mom.

I have been trying to write this blog post for months. Even the title I can not decide. Should it be, "Who is an Appalachian?," "What is an Appalachian?", or "Where are Appalachians located?" It is such an elusive broad topic for this Appalachian woman, I kept putting it off. But everyday something else pops up about Appalachia. In my mind, because we keep being labeled not in a good way, I think it is important to try to put it in some kind of perspective.

Then +Johnny Depp ,.... BLESS his heart....said something about his mother's Appalachian roots and a flood gate opened in my head. I will say I am a little upset with what he said, and I am a Johnny Depp fan, but now, however I say it, something HAS to be said.

This is not going to be some scholarly article. I can write on that level but scholars write for scholars and I'm of the opinion they like to use words that are mostly....well... for scholars. I am of the opinion also many need to be beat over the head with a dictionary.

Why worry with what is an Appalachian? Because my family has been located here in the Virginia/North Carolina/West Virginia mountains for many, many generations and that makes my grandchildren and my family, even those that live at a distance, of or pertaining to, or located in Appalachia, Appalachian. We deal with what ever that means every single day. Our history, our culture, the way we talk, how we live, are all effected by others perception of Appalachians but most importantly our own perception of ourselves.

Today what brought up my desire to write about this topic again was this article in the upcoming July 4th Rolling Stone Johnny Depp interview.   Where even Johnny Depp says, "My mother was raised in a shack, in the wilds of Appalachia, where the toilet was an outhouse."  He was using the reference to child rearing practices of butt whooping, which was a more universal common practice whose use has changed. The violence alone of "spare the rod, spoil the child" practice was in a much broader religious use than just in Appalachia, but I took what he was saying was his mother didn't know better because of where she was raised. I understand what he's saying about child rearing today is better and less violent but .... mentioning it with Appalachia, shacks and outhouses.....well hurt my feelings.

Sigh......I, for one, have a very different understanding of Appalachian outhouses. Always have. Given the modern problems we have with sewer systems sometimes it would be preferable to have an outhouse! I even argued at a meeting on museum displays that we should not downplay the existence of outhouses in our Appalachian story. I knew many a fancy house with an outhouse just because a septic system could not be put in. It wasn't just the shacks in Appalachia that had an outhouse. There are modern businesses today that have tanks in the ground that need a pump and haul system in Appalachia.

I spoke about that in another blog post. But those two words, "outhouse" and "Appalachia", automatically only "down trodden poor ignorant people" comes to mind. Perhaps his mother was from a poor family with an outhouse, but it seems like I have to defend this subject all the time to those not understanding the make up of the ground, especially in my part of Appalachia, with the nature of building sewer systems.

My grandfather in the 1960's lived in the Bluefield, WV city limits in a four room house he built himself with gravity flow water and an outhouse.  We really didn't consider ourselves "poor" but from the outside looking in I guess folks would think that.

All my life outhouses are just something we lived with and I was born in the 50's. In the 70's and 80's I was living in houses with an outhouse.  In the early 80's, I had a friend that lived in Floyd County, VA in a 1930's home. It had gravity flow water and an outhouse. The land would not "perk" to put a septic system in and it's remote location meant no town sewer service so that also was out of the question.

I took another friend to visit who had never used an outhouse in her life. But this one was quite made up. This outhouse had a regular toilet seat, a red fuzzy seat warmer, a red rug, a framed picture on the wall, a magazine rack, a toilet paper holder and it had electricity ran to it for a light and a heater. The one who had never visited an outhouse was quite impressed.

Today we just have a septic system on this 150 year old house. The problem for that system is we hooked the water up to a treated public water system and it's killing our septic system. Building a sewer plant in an area as rocky and winding in this part of Appalachia for a few people is quite costly. I had an engineer tell me that an outhouse would be more eco-friendly than our septic systems which are failing. Some of us Appalachians have always realized an outhouse can be the results of issues beyond anyone's control and know how to live with an outhouse as a resource. Today modern solar compostable toilets are a blessing in this area. Sorry Johnny, my point is we don't see ourselves in that same "poor" light for having to use one.

So what is an Appalachian and where is Appalachia?  Wiki gives this definition: Appalachia is a cultural region in the eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York state to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia.^[1] While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in the U.S. state of Alabama, the cultural region of Appalachia typically refers only to the central and southern portions of the range. As of 2005, the region was home to approximately 23 million people.^[2] 

The Appalachian Regional Commission has a map of Appalachian Counties. From Maine to Mississippi the trouble really begins because there is such a great diversity of people within the Appalachian geographic region itself to even try to define what is an Appalachian.  Many don't take too kindly to say that the only cultural area is in the central or southern portions of the range. There is also a wide spectrum of the economic base from millionaires to miners as well as different ethnicities and races which are comprised in this area called Appalachia.

I have another friend that says he can beat me on the diversity issue of an Appalachian because first he's black, with Native American and an Italian grandmother!  He also says the being a black/Native American/Appalachian now days on the discrimination scale is a triple whammy.

Northern Appalachians say there is a different culture in Southern Appalachia. Many say the Southern Appalachian stereotype gives other Appalachians a bad name. I became very upset once in college because my professor said that the moonshining, blue grass music picking Appalachian was a myth or a stereotype perpetuated by Hollywood. Okay I can tell the difference but EXCUSE ME?  He just had told me my whole family history and experience was a myth? And that was not true!!

But in talking to him over the years what we came to understand is that it was a different history and experience for his Appalachian family. They lived in a town with water and sewer in a slightly northern area from my family. Which leads me to believe that even some Appalachians are discriminatory towards other Appalachians.

Another real bone of contention is "dialects". The way we talk in different areas especially the southern mountains.  Appalachian English of which my family and community in my part of Southern Appalachia still speaks is disappearing. We have always had a hard time dealing with this issue inside the area and out. We are told in order to communicate we need to change our language to "proper modern English".  Never mind some of the forms of the Appalachian English we speak are older than that!  The dialects are different in different areas but one of the most glaring obvious clues you have that you are talking to an Appalachian, especially a Southern Appalachian, is when we open our mouths and speak.

I have a relative right now who works for a very large international company in our area who was given English courses and diction courses to get the "twang" out of his speech in order to be employed by this company. There are also people who work at call centers in our area that have said they experienced the same thing. One lady told me you can get written up for speaking any of the old dialect.  I find it ironic that Samuel Clemons/Mark Twain made a career of writing southern dialects into characters of his books, yet we are wanting to eradicate those in our area from speaking in their own. Is it any different getting someone from India with a dialect when you dial a call center for computer service?

Some say we are winning the dialect war because of words that were ours making it into modern English speech especially in the south. That somewhat may be true but the old speech I grew up with is dying out quite rapidly. I don't say, "If' in ye a mind to", that often as my aunts did. Plus there seems to be this modern move to eradicate it from our children completely in school.

How do you explain that to your grandchildren? How do you save our culture and dialect or at least honor it? Especially when you come across articles like this: Appalachian Americans the Invisible Minority . The goal is to help our children understand today they have to be multi-cultural in order to survive.

Our problems over the years seem to be the perceptions of those from outside the area looking at our people through their own ideals of what life should be like. Many times in the past it was just to exploit our resources then automatically deciding they needed to modernize and change us. As if we could not figure that out on our own.

My Aunt Florence once was told by a missionary, "We have come to save the Appalachian People." At which my aunt asked her, "From what?" She never got an answer. 

Another time a lady came by for a visit during canning season. She was visiting homes in the holler giving out brochures about proper canning. Now my Aunt was in her late 60's and had been canning all her life and never poisoned anyone. I remember when the lady left she said, "Good Lord, they are trying to save us to death!"

We here in this part of Appalachia know the War on Poverty of the Kennedy administration, especially in reference to our area, was based on a very skewed view of Appalachia. At that time there were millionaires mansions right along side a house with an outhouse in the same area they were giving out food stamps. Poverty, any where in the U.S., when you focus on it and take a picture of it, looks the same. The economic systems and politics that create that poverty are prevalent everywhere not just Appalachia.

I am an Appalachian woman by ancestry and I guess definition. When I was growing up we never considered ourselves "Appalachians". That really is a new recent term for our family. We called ourselves, "hillbillies" and to us it was a badge of honor. A redneck was a striking union member. They wore red bandanas around their necks so you would know who was who in a strike. That could be miners or railroaders either one.  It was turned into something completely different from what I grew up with.

I can see where we were different in our speech, our traditions and our location of family history. We never thought of ourselves in the perceptions I am hearing now. We never thought of any of our family as backwards or poor. An outhouse in Appalachia could just mean bad location for a sewer system. Just regular hardships of life.

In all my study of our family history that goes back on the eastern shores of Virginia 100 years prior to the Revolutionary War, to 1750's on the frontier, the "isolated" Appalachian just did NOT exist in my family!! EVER!!! They had kinship ties all over the United States traveling far and wide! Our family reunions look sometimes like the United Nations.

So what is an Appalachian? I think that is for us to determine now. Is it just people tied to a geographical area? Is it a separate distinct culture? To change the bad perceptions we are going to have to tell our actual stories and our history with an understanding that there were moonshiners, outhouses and millionaires all in the mix.

And Johnny Depp? I am sure your mother will never ever have to use an outhouse again. But I can bet that if all the worlds systems go into a crisis and the sewer systems quit working....you'd be asking her how to build and maintain one and she would KNOW!!  Appalachians from the wild have that knowledge.

Please feel free to comment your thoughts on these subjects.  Yes, I know I was a little hard on Johnny Depp...but I have just about all his movies. To me he's one of the best actors of our times. I am a big fan but that doesn't mean he ain't above reproach. None of us are. His mother is Appalachian and that to me makes him Appalachian, though he may be a refugee from us. As such he has to come to terms to what that identity means to him and his family and question do the outside perceptions of what is an Appalachian really fit?

August 2016 UPDATE Condolences to the Depp family on his mother's death. There is a saying here in the mountains...as long as our children's hearts beat and our grandchildren's hearts beat, so does ours.

On another note I love this song about Appalachians.