Outhouse Tales

This was maybe the summer of 1952, somewhere in there. Zoanne Halvorsen and I were at the cabin, taking care of an injured horse and running with the fire guards (and the wife of one of them). We were going to be leaving the next day and they had come down for dinner the evening before. We wanted to pull some sort of joke on them, a gentle, practical joke. And so, at dinner, we told them, we had to go take care of the horse one more time.

They offered to go with us, but we said, “No, no, you stay here. Watch the fire. Make sure the food doesn’t burn.” We didn’t want them to come with us, of course, because we weren’t going to take care of any horse. So we promised that we’d hurry.

They stayed at the cabin and we went up to the Ranger Station and looked around. We decided to nail the door to the outhouse shut. Anyone in a hurry in the morning, would have to slow down and get a hammer. Nothing destructive. Nothing damaging. Just something to let them know we’d been there.

We nailed the outhouse door shut and then returned to the cabin, saying the horse looked fine. They stayed until 10:00 or 11:00, and then left. We said our goodbyes since we were going to be leaving early in the morning.

The next morning, pretty early, just getting light, I started the fire and went up to the outhouse, the only flush outhouse on Paiute Mountain. It was a dewy morning and I sat down on the seat and thought, “God, how did the seat get so wet?” I slid further into the seat and thought, “God, that feels sticky.” Then I stood up and ran my fingers around the inside lip of the toilet seat and found that someone, some fire guard, had smeared honey there. Honey doesn’t come off too easily. I limped back to the cabin for some warm water and a washrag to expunge the stuff and warn Zoanne to take something up with her.

We cleaned up the toilet, put out the fire and closed the cabin. We got about a half mile from the cabin, over a hill and down into a little gulley at the Grey Squirrel claim, where we found a toilet paper streamer across the road between two trees. It said, “Have a good trip” or something like that. These guys had snuck back while we were sleeping. Boy, they had been quiet.