At our little twin house in Cedar Hollow, we had no indoor plumbing—running water, yes, but no bathroom. Each home had its own outhouse in the back yard. There’s no nice way to say that, but our next door neighbor, Josephine, had the prettiest outhouse on the block, painted white and all grown over with twisty wisteria vines. When that vine bloomed in April you could not imagine any finer place to take a pee. For the most part, though, having to go to the outhouse was just a step above changing a baby’s diaper.
When the weather turned frigid in December and January, my mother would leave a bucket at the bottom of the stairs for us to pee in before we went to bed so we didn’t have to make that freezing trek outside at night.
One Christmas eve, my sister Evelyn was at the bucket when she saw Santa Claus out the window making his way towards our house. You never saw a child pick up and run up the stairs so fast! She didn’t know if Santa would like her being on the pot or not, but figured it best not test the theory. She was still up and awake, after all.
I know now that our more affluent Main Line neighbors call them “shanties” today, but back then it was just company housing in a company town, nothing more or less. Most everybody we knew worked for Warner Company. The only ones who didn’t were the ones who owned the small businesses and, looking back now, they were probably as poor as we were.
The company had a community center and on holidays and special occasions they would have dinners or parties or a night with Santa or whatever, to keep up the goodwill among the workers.
My dad had what was considered a good job back then, one with health insurance and a pension and a gold watch after 20 years. In those days, when you had a good job you stayed there until retirement whether you liked the job or not. The company pretty much ruled our lives. We always lived in a company house, even when we moved down to the big farmhouse on Church Road. Warner only charged my dad $20 a month to rent it until we were forced out in 1967.
...to be continued