There Was An Old Woman Who Lived in a House
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #122
This is not my photo; it’s a partial screenshot from a Facebook post, which I’ll show you below.
But first, here are a few quotes from the conversation in the comments:
“When she got down and sick we moved her in with someone and they had TV and she said ‘if I’d known about this I would have moved long ago.’”
“It’s nice and quiet for sure, but when you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night during the winter, that’s not very serene. Trust me I know.”
My grandparents lived in Pembroke and no running water no bathroom- just a walk up the hill winter or summer.
We would be better off to go back to this style [of] living, makes you respect your neighbors alot more cause you are gonna need them sooner or later...
She has the amazing little rock layered “bathtub” in the creek that is surrounded by beautiful flowers. I’ve always loved it she has it dug out about 3 feet deep.
There is a book out there about my family. I made another post about my great great great great etc grandfathers house too he is talked about in the book because he rode a donkey from Charlottesville to almost here before it died on him after the civil war and my son is the 7th generation to live in this same little creek since him.
About 9 years ago, we broke down and got a generator when a Nov. ice storm knocked out power for a week. Of course, as soon as we bought it the power was restored. We’ve only used it a couple times bc usually the electricity is back on within hours, not days, and I tell my kids they’ll survive for a little while. They all gather together (bc no internet/cells) in the living room where we keep the fire going and we talk/play cards. Once the power is restored, the magic *poof* ends and they scatter like cockroaches back to their little man caves.
That last one. Makes me think.
So here’s the full post:
The dashed area here is the county this cabin is in:
I’ve never been to Southwest Virginia, but it’s a different world than my bustling, cosmopolitan corner of the state up in Fairfax County. This whole Facebook thread is about a different world—though one that is not entirely gone.
You see statistics like “99 percent of U.S. households have indoor plumbing” (or something like that), and it’s easy to forget that one percent, or a fraction of a percent, still means hundreds of thousands of people. Somewhere, there are individuals or communities which still lack what feel like the most basic and universal modern conveniences. More than one million Americans, today, lack indoor plumbing according to some studies, mostly in rural areas and big cities. That’s only .3 percent.
When I was in college, I did an “alternative spring break” trip to eastern Kentucky, where we helped people in coal country with things like painting, insulation, and other home improvement tasks. Several houses had coal heating. One woman had a Zenith tube television from the 1970s sitting on her dresser. A couple of thrift stores I popped into had lots of stuff from the ’90s. It was like time had largely stopped. Of course, that’s a simplification. But there was definitely an element of truth to it.
There are so many interesting threads here—this question of whether people back then were really happier, which folks in the comments argued over; whether, if they were, we could ever choose to forego modern conveniences to get that back; the tension between enjoying what we have now and having some sense of what people not that long ago had to do; the complicated feelings of people who worked hard for their children to have a better life, who now feel like their adversity taught them something important that we lack today.
I can see the appeal. I remember fondly, for example, interning on a small farm during college. I know the satisfaction of doing something myself. But I know myself: the first spider in the outhouse, and I’m done and never looking back. But I guess I’m happy there are some people happy to keep it.
Related Reading:
Dine Like It’s 1950 in Warrenton, Virginia
Thank you for reading! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekly subscribers-only post, plus full access to the archive: over 700 posts and growing. And you’ll help ensure more material like this!
My great grandmother lived in a little old house in Snyder, Texas with plumbing but no sewage, just an outhouse, up until about 1994
I find it interesting how much people who don't live that way romanticize it. No way in hell I'd want to be without indoor plumbing, and the hygiene improvement in public health is why we don't have people dying if typhoid these days.
But the no power example, that people socialize and play cards (presumably because they would otherwise watch TV or go online or play Xbox), is interesting. When I was a kid there were rather fancy b&bs that *boasted* they didn't have TV in the rooms, and I traveled with my parents. I can't imagine somewhere now boasting they didn't have wifi!