i've found an orginial out house door without the moon in it and have made like a closet inside my show trailer and put the door on it. inside, of course, is a man stuffed with hay. he has on overalls and a long sleeve shirt, a wig and a jd hat with his back to people. a little 12 year old girl opened the door and it scared her, but most people just get a good laugh out of it. of course there is a bucket with corn cobs in it hanging there for toilet paper. but i'm serious about wanting to know the story of the half moon cut in the door. i have a 26 foot trailer that is enclosed and i have the walls lined with lumber from my grand fathers barn and it is loaded with lots of old things you'd find in a old barn,. peope love coming through my trailer and i enjoy showing and telling the history as i know it of items in there. people like the old 2 man chain saw. it brings out a lot of tails from guys who have ran them. i have something for every age in there inckluding a cows skull that i ask the kids about where they like to brush their teeth or not and then show them the cows teeth and ask them if they'd like to have to brush them. i also ask women when they come in if they would like to see my wifes new ride and if the say yes i pull out a broom. i put a sign on the side door, where i post flyers for up coming shows, that stated that my wife cranks my tractor and she got mad about it. so i took a piece of paper and pen and put another one under it that says my girl friend shuts it off and she got mad about that too. you'll have a good day.

I stopped using Google, they are getting too big and accumulate too much personal info I'm afraid, so heres a bit of what Yahoo search and Yahoo answers found:


The idea that outhouses always have moons on them has been perpetuated largely by several generations of cartoonists (e.g., Al Capp), probably none of whom ever saw one either.
The only reference I can find to the practice is in Eric Sloane's The Little Red Schoolhouse: A Sketchbook of Early American Education. Discussing 18th- and 19th-century schoolhouses, Eric writes: "The woodshed was often a lean-to attached to the schoolhouse, but the most accepted arrangement was to place it between the schoolhouse and the privy, with a fence separating the boys' entrance from the girls'. The ancient designation of privy doors was to saw into them a sun (for boys' toilet) and a moon (for girls' toilet)." Eric has supplied a sketch of both versions, showing the familiar crescent moon for the girls and a radiant sun for the boys.
By way of corroboration, I note here in my manual of semiotics that the moon "is usually represented as the feminine power, the Mother Goddess, Queen of Heaven, with the sun as the masculine." Isn't that just great? All this time you thought you were in there just doing your business and now it turns out you were participating in a pagan ritual.
Why cartoonists picked up on the moon rather than the sun as the universal symbol for outhouse is hard to say. But knowing cartoonists I'd guess it has something to do with the fact that the radiant sun is **** to draw. The reason there's a hole in the first place is a lot simpler: it provides ventilation.


Two ideas. (1) It's a crescent moon. (2) Moons (of any phase) may not have universally adorned real outhouses when outhouses were common. They're a convention of cartoons and other forms of fiction, much like all businesses being named Acme. I hope someone else can say how the moons got started.

: : Put there for ventilation, no doubt. There have been books written about outhouses but there are none in my library. Could it be tied to signs painted on barns? Or maybe a crescent moon is just a logical shape. A full moon would allow someone to get a good look.

: Yes, for ventilation, but why a moon at all? If you work with wood, about the first thing you notice is that without fancy tools it's much easier to cut straight lines than curves. A row of small square windows would ventilate as well.

I found a web site that has an FAQ on outhouses.
This find proves that I really need to get a life!
Here is a paste from the FAQ:

"The answer lies in the lighting inside because outhouses were around before electricity. The best way to let light in was to put in a window. For privacy reasons, most outhouses were designed with the window above the line of sight. Many early outhouses contained a decorative "moon cutout" covered by glass. This allowed just enough light in to take care of business! It also allowed the real moon to shine through during the night. Bringing a lit lantern into some outhouses could have caused quite a bang so the moon won out! In reality, most people had a covered pot under the bed to go in during the night. Get's mighty cold at night going outside and the varmints are something else!

Here is another explanation...
Probably the most recognizable symbol associated symbol with the traditional outhouse building is the familiar crescent moon carved into the privy door. Actually, the symbol is an ancient one, and was a sign for womanhood in colonial days and on the frontier. It's male counterpart, Sol, was either a star or a sun burst design also on the door. Since most male outhouses fell into disrepair rather quickly they seldom survived; while the female ones were better maintained, and were eventually used by both sexes. Although you can find outhouses still standing with the crescent moon, the original meaning for gender identification was lost by the later nineteenth century in most areas of the country.

Here is another response from another person... The moon that is often found on the outhouse door stand for the ancient sign- luna- or womanhood. When the outhouse was first invented people needed these signs to discern which was the men's or women's bathroom-for most people couldn't read. Soon, however, the men's became rundown or was very unkempt and not maintained. So everybody just used the women's bathroom, and the mens sunburst or sol sign was forgotten. The moon sign was kept and is also used as a vent.

Another person corrects the term "quarter moon" as follows. This person obviously knows more about the sky than I do: The first sentence states that it is a quarter moon. A quarter moon, however, is a half lit moon where the terminator is half-way between each side of the disk. It would be more accurate to refer to the moon as a crescent moon in all cases. And if you wanted to be pedantic about it you could go so far as to call it a waxing or waning crescent moon depending on which side is lit."


Maybe Google it n see what yall find

John T

Why Google? I've been in a bunch of outhouses in my day & I ain't seen one yet with a moon on the door. They all had crack's between the rough sawn boards wide enough to let in plenty of light so why bother cutting an extra hole? Didn't happen in our neck of the woods.

And what about those so called slop jars the womenfolk kept under the bed & we menfolk had to carry out and empty every day? In the first place, they weren't jar's & in the second place that weren't slop in them either! Where were the women's libber's back then? I'd a gladly let them carry their own so called slop jar!

Ya'll are both gonna have to get back to playing with your B's, cause ya'll are both getting BORED! LOL
M-MAN

wow, all this is quite interesting to me. my door did come off of a working john and didn't have anthing in it but the cracks in it like m-man said. as far as the slop jar goes, i have the one that my mother used as a child. in an area close to me called sand moutain which is where places like albertville and boaz al are located, they refer to them as thunder jugs. guess why. i never thought about doing a search on the web for them. just didn't seem like anything anybody would read about. i apprecaitre the time and effort that you guys put into this question, but i guess like the man says its time we got a life now, huh. oh, by the way, i made some picture frames from old barn lumber and found that by using some charcoal type pencils that you could mix and match several different kinds on the places where you had to saw and make the saw cut look like old wood. you have to look close to see the difference. i'd put a little on and wipe it off with a rag and then even used some streaks of a red one to add some color to it. using and old worn out blade and making a slight movement to keep the blade from cutting a straight line mad it look even more real.

Dang, I got to get to studying now. Where i grew up the outhouse had a star cut in the door.

The door faced south and I can still remember that shaft of light coming thru the door, but I can't remember what the heck day this is.

hey dave, that was your name right, it gets better the older you get. you just forget that you were suppose to be studying about something.

I don't remember anything having been cut in the door of the old s**thouse (yes that what is was called) on the farm. We had indoor plumbing so the s**thouse was more a target, it had more bullet holes in it than anything (but bees).

You're right Steve, we refered to ours as the s**thouse as well. Or, around polite company, the crapper. We didn't have any moons, stars, or suns on the door either. In fact, mine is still standing right where it always has. If I took the time to get all of the pipe and buckets of fittings and bent nails and mice nests out of it, it'd still be useable.

Now, since we have all of this spare time on our hands, let's really test your s*... er, outhouse knowledge. John mentioned a bucket of corn cobs in his. Does anybody know why there were both red corn cobs and white corn cobs in the outhouse? If you do, you probably grew up using an outdoor privy.

I still laugh when I think about the story our neighbor Barney used to tell about the outhouse they had when he was a kid. He grew up in Pennsylvania mining country during the 1920s and outhouses were as common as dirt. Barney and his brother were quite the rascals and on occasion received outhouse duty to redeem themselves for yet another step out of line. Outhouse duty involved moving the outhouse off the hole, then digging a new hole next to it while shoveling the dirt from the new hole into the old hole. There were several kids in the family so this happened with some frequency. The brother being of the inventive type got the brilliant idea considering dynamite was as available as shovels, aquired 4 sticks and some fuse from the local mine.
As the story went it would have been a heck of a lot less trouble to have just dig the new hole and been done with it. Washing down several houses in the area, picking pieces of catalog pages out of trees and replacing several blown out window panes AND digging a new hole were not a lot of fun with a freshly and severely tanned backside.

i'm enjoying this alot. i did do a search on aol for out house and found alot of reading. in some parts of the country it sems like they had double decker out houses. the most interseting name i found was the long drop. i have a corn sheller that i let kids shell corn with a tractor shows and while they are doing that i pick on a lady in the crowd who looks to be a little timid. i go over and tell her she needs to carry some of the corn cobbs home with her for emergency toilet paper. since the only cobs i have are red i applogize to her for not having any white ones. if they don't ask right away what you need white ones for i tell them they might as well ask me because i'm going to tell them eithr way. after they ask i let them know that you need a white one to see if you need another red one or not. also note that there is a right way and wrong way to pull the cobb. if you run your finger up and down the length of the cobb you'll find its smoother one way than the other. years ago i cut and baled hay for the public. one day i sat down on a log with possin ivy on it and a fee days later decided that there needed to be a better way. i took a metal folding chair and cut a hole in the seat of it and mounted a toilet seat to it. i show it in my trailer and all the women laugh at it and the men all are thinking i'm going to make me one of tose to carry deer hunting with me. its ok when your in a hurry and forget what your doing and reach back to flush it. i had my cousions daughter write the words johns's john on it. i have always been told that every ear of corn you pick up will always have 16 rows on it. while in the amish country this past week end i was shown a new hybrid corn that has 20 rows of kernnels on it. probably makes a bigger cob for those people who have a large area to cover with the cobb. i don't say it, you thought it though didn't you. the word crapper comes from the name of the man who actually invented the orginal toilet and it had his name on it that said crapper. you'll have a good day.

Give that man a cheroot!

Obviously John, you're a man who knows his crapper history. Seriously though, this is a great topic. It may just be my advancing age, but I find it sad to think that there are lots of people in this country who don't know about this part of our heritage. Years ago I worked with an old plumbing inspector who liked to tell the story of his grandmother advising him not to become a plumber. She told him that fancy indoor toilets were nothing more than a fad and that people would soon figure out that you didn't want to take care of nature's call inside the house.

I also have to laugh whenever I hear dynamite and outhouse used in the same conversation Steve. My Dad always told stories about he and his cousin who were quite the hellions in their day. One of the things they enjoyed was blowing up mailboxes. My Dad's cousin would drive and my Dad would cap and fuse. Half a stick was just right to take out the mailbox, post and all. By their reckoning, a stick and a half should have been just right to tip over an outhouse. To their chagrin, they discovered that their calculations were just a little off. Needless to say, the combination of too much dynamite and too short of a fuse left them dripping with the evidence that they were the culprits. The remainder of their summer was spent at various forms of hard labor after they finished digging a new hole and building a new crapper for the farmer up the road. Being the kind of son who listened to his Daddy, I stayed away from all forms of outhouse mischief.

after i got into this subject i got concerned that some of the readers here might take my interest in the wrong way and want every body to know that my interest is just to get a laugh out of people here and at shows. i do prefer the female s-- in other words. this converstaion is leading to areas that bring all all kinds of tails from different people like the ones i use to get when i displayed wallking mule drawn cultivators. i restored two and with my age and medical condition i could handle the unloading and loading of them any longer from my show trailer so i sold them, but if you want to have some real down to earth conversations and laern alot of th history about working with mules get you a mule crawn cultivator and carry it to s show. you'll have a galary of stories told to you from someobdy at every show. i'll pass mine on nlater, but the grand kids are here and tey love pancakes and bacon the way paw paw fixes them so its off to slave over a hot stove. thanks for all the stories guys.

did any body see the out house on the lonesome dove show last night. you had to look past the actors out through a window, but there it was and i have wondered which way you turned the ends. that one was turned down, like a quarter moon. i've always heard that if the moon is tipped over its going to rain or pour out water as it were. look, you'll don't have to tell me i'm crazy. my wife does that every day just so i want forget. you'll have a good day.

John I think what you need to bring you back ot reality is to go to the old crapper and have the choice of brushing the frost off the seat or just pllain sitting down on it if you "gotta go."

Dave, That brings back some memories of cold, frosty mornings and the "ole" Sears catalogue.

Lee in NC

you'll know that my dad used to complain about walking up with snow on his bed and you didn't go ot side to feed the chickens you just dropped feed thru the crakcs in the floor board, i use to show walking cultivators. i saw a man coming across the show grounds and making a bee line for that cultivtor. he walked up to it and grabbed the handle bars on it and the blood drained out of his face. i left him a lone for a few minutes with hs memories and then walked over and asked him why he grabbed the handle bars that he didn't know any thing about that plow. i got a good cussing out and alot of stories out of him. thats what tractor shows are for. never been to one when i didin't see something i've never seen before. you guys don't have to tell me about the cold. i'm married.

Yes I am a little too young to have grown up with outhouses, but have beard a few stories over the years. The one that sticks in my head is one my grandma told me about a few boys out pulling halloween pranks! Apparently one guy was tired of having his outhouse tipped over so before dark he pushed his back a few feet, and when those boys came along later that evening with the intention of tipping it over backwards the prank ended up being on them when they fell into the hole! The outhouse at our summer hobby farm is still functional (basically it has been kept up and hasnt rotted to the ground) My grandpa, dad and I still use it, Im not sure why but we all get a kick out of using it! My grandpa grew up with it and it suprises me hes still willing to use it! Im not sure why I think its so neat to use maybe its the appreciation one gets for indoor plumbing!

at least you said you got a kick out of using it instead of getting splinters out of it. i guess that somebody probably spent some time with a piece of glass scraping down the seat to insure that didn't happen. i just had a thought. i wonder how many times somebody used the last corn cobb or piece of the sears catralog and didn't put somethng back in there for the next guy to use. reminds me of the joke i heard about two guys sitting next to each other on the johns. one asked the other one if he had any paper over there and the other said no. i was just fixing to ask you for some. after a long silence one guy ask the other one if he had change for a ten.