Outhouse - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• The double-decker outhouse has been used as an unflattering metaphor for the "Trickle-down theory" of politics, economics, command, management, labor relations, responsibility, etc. Depending on who is depicted on top and below, it is an easy and familiar cartoon.
• On November 10, 2003, a drawing of an outhouse was used by B.C. (comic strip) cartoonist Johnny Hart as a motif in a controversial and allegedly religiously-themed piece. The cartoonist denied the allegations, and the convoluted analysis of the alleged iconography of the cartoon.
• In Michigan, the Upper Peninsula's Trenary has the largest outhouse race but Mackinaw City is home to an annual and largest "outhouse race south of the Mackinac Bridge". Another famous outhouse race is during the Yale Bologna Festival.
• Charles Chic Sale was a famous comedian in vaudeville and the movies. In 1929 he published a small book, The Specialist ISBN 0-285-63226-4 which was a hugely popular "underground" success. Its entire premise centered on sales of outhouses, touting the advantages of one kind or another, and labeling them in "technical" terms such as "one-holers", "two-holers", etc. SeeThe Specialist by Charles (Chic) Sale (as told in 1929). Over a million copies were sold. In 1931 his monolog "I'm a Specialist" was made into a hit record (Victor 22859) by popular recording artist Frank Crumit (music by Nels Bitterman). As memorialized in the "Outhouse Wall of Fame", the term "Chic Sale" became a rural slang synonym for privies, an appropriation of Mr. Sale's name that he personally considered unfortunate. Id.
• Folk singer Billy Edd Wheeler wrote and performed a song titled "The Little Brown Shack Out Back", a sentimental look at the outhouse. The song is often played on the Dr. Demento radio show.
• The U.S. National Park Service once built an outhouse that cost above $333,000.
• As a college student, Richard Nixon achieved renown by providing a three-hole outhouse to be tossed onto the traditional campus bonfire.
• Tsi-Ku also known as Tsi Ku Niang is described as the Chinese Goddess of the outhouse and divination. It is said that a woman could uncover the future by going to the outhouse to ask Tsi-Ku.
• Old outhouse pits are seen as excellent places for archeological and anthropological excavations, offering up a trove of common objects from the past—a veritable inadvertent time capsule—which yields historical insight into the lives of the bygone occupants. It is especially common to find old bottles, which seemingly were secretly stashed or trashed, so their content could be privately imbibed.