Toilet paper

Toilet paper on a roll, not always available in the '40's

We stopped at a supermarket one afternoon recently at a place called Tamuras, on the Waianae Coast of Oahu, a rural area in Hawaii and a store where most locals shop.  I observed the cost of toilet paper and said to a young 20-something clerk, as she laughed, about the $12+ price for 12 rolls, "Gotta tear up the newspaper pieces the right size because these prices are simply too much."

In the 1940's in the small towns of America not everyone could afford an indoor toilet, especially if the family was poor, like ours.  And it surely could not buy toilet paper. When the war was on, many people still had outhouses. I lived in a town called La Grande in Eastern Oregon where that was true for us and others.

 Instead of indoor toilets there were small sheds, just big enough for a door and a single person to sit on a raised, box-like apparatus with a hole cut out in the center.  Beside it was a stack of torn pieces of newspaper to sanitize oneself after using the facilities,ordinarily located close enough to a house, not to trip in the dark, yet far enough so the odors would not drift into the living area. There was, you see, no cover for the hole in the box, except for a piece of butcher paper.  The newspaper pieces, however, were softer for a growing behind or even the older ones too.

Newspapers for us had more than one use years ago.  Of course, some might say, much in jest certainly, that they still should be used the same way these days after reading.

Carol