After the pickup truck move from Baltimore Maryland, we moved into the summer house on Grandpa Cornell's place. Until then, I didn't know what a summer house was. When I heard it called a summer house, I thought it was a place you might move to for the summer. But, if that was true, why was it so close to the regular house? Later in life, I found out that many people call it a cook house and use it in the hot summer weather to do the cooking so they don't heat up the regular house, which gets hot enough without the heat of a woodstove cooking. The summer house was one story and had several screened windows which were kept open for ventilation.
This was where I made acquaintance with my first outhouse. Now-a-days, the closest most people get to an outhouse is the portable pots found at carnivals or anyplace where there is an outdoor entertainment without indoor facilities. In my opinion, the real outhouses are comfortable places compared to the modern portables, which are really cramped places. The most interesting thing I learned about that outhouse was that there was no toilet paper. Grandpa believed it to be a waste of good money to buy toilet paper when both Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs were always available. Getting low on toilet paper? Just go to your nearest catalog store and pick up another catalog. After all, they were free.
We really didn't have much in the way of money and Grandpa was nice enough to tell the grocer (I believe there was only one) to let us have what groceries we needed and put them on his book. In rural communities at that time, the grocer kept books for each family that needed to buy groceries that way because they didn't always have money when they needed groceries. Later, when they had money, they'd go on over to the grocer and pay on their book.
The books were those like the ones waitresses used. There was the page on which she wrote down your order and under it was another page which might be another color or might be printed with a different color ink. Attached to the inside of the back of the book, under the order pages, there was a sheet of carbon paper. The carbon paper was as wide as the book and long enough that the unattached end could be brought out and placed between the two sheets of a pair of order pages. The order would be written on the top page which was torn off and then given to the cook to fill the order. The copy was used as your bill.
When you bought groceries this way, the grocer actual wrote in the book precisely what you got, how many and the cost. If you bought more than just a few items, he'd use as many pages as necessary to detail every item. At the top was the total owed before the current things were added and at the end would be today's total followed by the new total owed. I believe that he gave you the copy so that you knew how much you owed and, if you felt you needed to, you could check your copies against his originals to be sure he hadn't added anything to your bill.
I think it was after the first time my father went to the store and picked up some groceries and the grocer put them on Grandpa's book, that Grandpa stormed over to the summer house and gave my father the dickens for putting toilet paper or the grocery book. He had been to the store and checked to see what my father had gotten. I don't remember what was said; I just remember being told to go outside and play and then hearing the angry yelling coming from inside the summer house. Later, we kids were told we'd not be able to use toilet paper while we were there. I, for one, was glad when we finally moved and were able to use real toilet paper again.
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