I think this reference is from way before Arlo’s time as well as before the kid’s time. Probably before Arlo’s father’s time as well. So is this just a case of Arlo having helped himself to the pumpkin spice vodka?
- Comment
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Could be. Or maybe a random statement by Arlo. Kids are glued to their phone. Arlo wants to see if this kid responds with “huh?” or more likely nothing because he’s not listening.
I agree with Mark. Also, maybe Arlo is a little sad that all mischievousness is gone. It’s just a corporate exercise is getting free candy.
As per references to tipping outhouses, my dad would be about the same age as Arlo’s dad, maybe a bit younger and he had tales of outhouse tipping in his youth.
We had many a tale of cow-tipping in Wisconsin. I assume not as messy as outhouse-tipping.
Ummm…actually…
https://modernfarmer.com/2013/09/cow-tipping-myth-or-bullcrap/
Outhouse tipping is most hilarious if someone is in it, of course, according to tales of hooliganism. But really, it’s tipping over a large, portable shed. A major nuisance, for sure, but not messy. The poo remains in the poo hole in the ground. The outhouse would normally be built with the intention to move it, because when the poo hole filled up, you’d cover it with dirt and dig a new poo hole, but you’d re-use the structure.
I think your second sentence nailed it, SingaporeBill.
Don’t know how old Arlo’s father would have been, but our family had an outhouse until c.1960 when I was something like fourteen or fiftenn. Nobody ever tipped it, though. (And, yes, it did have to be moved every few years.)
On the other hand, I’m not sure, being a farm family at the end of a long road, that we ever got any trick or treaters on Halloween anyway.
Shrug, Arlo’s father is a WWII veteran, as we’ll see in a comic series CIDU Bill will post again soon.
I picked blueberries when I was a teen in the 80s and there was at least one outhouse in the feed for the workers. They probably didn’t get any tricker treaters out there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tipped it in the summer when the kids were working out there.
Tipping over a Porta-Potty is a far more horrific prank than tipping over an outhouse.
I think it’s more about how kids these days are just too calm and well-mannered — the worst they do is have their nose stuck to a phone, in a manner which, in previous generations, only nerds with books managed. No crazy hi-jinks with this generation. Kids these days — they’re just well-mannered and politically engaged, with sardonic senses of humor.
I’m not sure sticking your nose in a phone and refusing to engage even for *your* activity and feeling entitled to candy yet put upon to so much as interact, can be considered “well-mannered”.
SBill, would even a WW2 veteran have lived in the days of outhouses? My uncles were all WW2 veterans (or old enough to be), yet I’m pretty sure they all grew up with indoor plumbing.
@CIDU Bill, outhouse experience would depend on where you lived. Rural enough families have them as I write (let alone non-USA non-Europe families). My grandparents had the Eastern Europe equivalent until they immigrated. My parents grew up in Brooklyn, so no.
I graduated from high school in the mountains of Pennsylvania in 1962, and of the 30 kids in my graduating class, only three of us had indoor plumbing. I was considered wealthy because my family was the only one with a whole-house furnace instead of a woodstove in the kitchen. My friend Helen was very proud of the fact that their well pump was in the kitchen, at the sink, not in the yard (thus “indoor” plumbing)..
There was no point in tipping an outhouse, but if you really wanted to “get” someone, you’d move the outhouse back just far enough that the pit was just inside the door, instead of under the seat.
CIDU Bill, I understand your family is from. New York City. That was one of the most heavily built up cities in the world by the start of the 20th Century. Toronto, on the other hand, not so much outside the heart. You’d have been able to walk to the outskirts of town and into fields fairly easily. Toronto is also a city of ravines. They would have hemmed in development of a lot of areas. In the 30s most northward expansion was along a relatively narrow corridor centred on Yonge Street.
When I was kid visiting my grandparents on the farm, they still had the old outhouse even though there was indoor plumbing by then. My grandfather didn’t need to go all the back to the house when working outside.
“all the way back” of course.
Carlfink, flashbacks suggest that Arlo had a comfortably middle-class childhood.
Arlo had a nice comfortable upbringing because his dad, who came of age in The Great Depression, worked hard to provide for his family. I certainly had a more comfortable life than my parents had as children. And regardless of Arlo’s dad’s circumstances, he still would have heard of outhouse tipping.
My grandparents’ neighborhood is now completely built up, and counts today as “D.C. suburbs”, but back then it was completely rural and “way outside town” (the address was still “R.F.D.” until the late 60’s or early 70’s). They first installed indoor plumbing in the mid 50’s, but I think I remember seeing the (dormant) outhouse when I was very small, and I know that part of the hedge that used to screen it was still visible may years later.
My dad told us about a notorious local outhouse-tipping incident from before I was born (apologies if this is a repeat): one of their older neighbors was actually in the outhouse when pranksters tipped it over one Halloween (the story went around the neighborhood like wildfire). For the following year, he got help to lift the outhouse off of the hole, moving it a few feet back within the enclosing hedge. The pranksters who came to repeat the previous year’s trick may not have been the same group, but in any case they didn’t notice in time, and some of them fell into the hole (that story went around even faster).
I once questioned the veracity of the tale, but my dad insisted that (a) he was not one of the pranksters involved, and (b) it was not an anonymous “urban legend”, he still knew the name of the neighbor who was “tipped”.
It’s easy to forget how slowly a lot of infrastructural advances penetrated non-urban areas. Not until the 60s in some places, as other commenters have noted. Before WWII, electricity and telephone availability was not unlike broadband Internet today. In the 30s it wasn’t all that unusual to see horse-drawn carts even in big cities. It’s astonishing sometimes to realize just how NEW a lot things we took for granted growing up actually were.
My urologist has photographs of outhouses on the walls of his practice. No brick ones, near as I can tell. Also, a few years ago when the village put in a new sewer line, I learned that the village only got indoor plumbing in 1937. It was a WPA project that used convict labor.
Now why would the WPA use convict labor? Seems to be missing the whole point…
“. . . that used convict labor.”
In Florida – at least here in Pinellas County – convict labor is still used to clean the roadsides, complete with ‘Warning – Jail Inmate Labor Ahead’ signs. First time I saw that – and the guys working in black&white striped jail suits, it felt kind of like a blast from the past, but I’ve gotten used to it and the roads DO look a lot nicer.
It isn’t the use of convict labor per se that caused my comment, it’s the use of convict labor in a program that is government funded make-work because so many people are out of work because there’s this great depression going on. If you turn around and have convicts do the make-work, then it makes no sense!
I for one ‘got it’ and agreed . . . does seem a bit self-defeating. Or program-defeating.
https://safr.kingfeatures.com/api/img.php?e=png&s=c&file=Qml6YXJyby8yMDE5LzExL0JpemFycm9fcC4yMDE5MTEwMV82NTcucG5n
Arlo doesn’t say that he ever tipped any outhouses. Arlo knows — and it is evident that everyone here knows — that tipping outhouses is an archetypal “trick” associated with old-time Trick-or-Treating (even if most tales are apocryphal). This 21st century kid comes to the door engrossed in his cell phone, so Arlo makes a sarcastic comment about the good old days.
Andréa -depends on how scared the cows are when they are tipped. (How much are the tipped – 15% of what?) :-)
When I was a kid – before I was 5 – we used to go to a bungalow in Rockaway for the summer. We had indoor plumbing, but there was also an outdoor shower – makes sense to rinse the sand off before going in the house I guess. My mom’s parents had the bungalow next to us or one near us every summer. One year I remember my dad’s parents and my cousins on that side of the family also took a bungalow, a few blocks away from us. As I remember, it was a 2 story building as opposed to our one story buildings and I remember it having an outhouse. My mom insists it did not, but I remember it. (Since dad is gone this is a problem, mom remembers everything a bit distorted and there is no one from the early days to agree with me.)
I went to girl scout camp when I was in junior high. We were in the youngest unit and had the “good” plumbing. Our outdoor showers had doors on them and we had a 3 hole outhouse – and I was in the group that got to clean it 3 times a week instead of 2 as the other 2 groups did.
“(How much are they tipped – 15% of what?)”
That’s funny . . . and I’d figure 15% of whatever the farmer gets for her milk.
In outhouse related strips (does it make it a sequitur?)\:
Brian in STL – I love that comic!
Oops – That was suppose to be “I love that comment” to Brian in STL. (it is 2:30 am)