Halloween was all about fun and pranks back in the day.  Oh yeah, some of the very youngest of kids in the city went trick or treatin',  but a lot of the kids did absolutely nothing.  Others, like my Mom and her brothers, they did things related to 'poor farm kids.'

Now these weren't malicious types of 'things,' but they were funny!  Like pushing over an outhouse for example.  Now that's funny!  Think about it; old farmer Jones or his portly wife heads out of the house in a hurry the next morning bound for the little shack out back doing their best to beat the call of nature.

Soon they notice the outhouse has been turned over.  What do you do?  You certainly don't have time right then to do repairs!

So, one problem creates another solution.  They soon began anchoring outhouses in various ways, and that helped somewhat.  But my Mom and her Halloween jokester cohorts ran into a solution that cured them from ever tipping an outhouse again!  Here's the story:

Mom and several others, (I know not which brothers were involved, but some close friends were involved as well), got the bright idea to tip over someones' outhouse.  This happened a couple of years or so in a row.  But one night, unsuspecting any change in the schedule of events, they made their way onto the property to tip these peoples outhouse over.

Unbeknownst to them, there was a trap and a positive solution awaiting them.  The owner had already beat them to the deed.  No, the outhouse wasn't already on its side, but, it had been moved!  The owner had simply moved the outhouse back about 6' and had covered the hole with some old cardboard.

He had then sprinkled dirt on the cardboard to camouflage it.  Unless you were looking for it, you'd never see it in the daytime, much less at nighttime!

So, here comes the troupe.  And of course, the inevitable happened.  I don't remember who got the privilege of riding in the back of the truck, but you can bet they sure didn't ride in the cab!

George Cavaness
11-01-2014