An Outhouse Story Not to Pooh-Pooh,
Beware Of The Monster Doing No. 2!

Halloween reminds me of outhouses.

Not those plastic Porta-Potties that you see lined up at events like county fairs or outdoor festivals, but rather those simple wooden sheds that often had the silhouette of a half-moon cut into the door.

While Halloween and outhouses might be a strange association to some -- OK, probably to most -- allow me to elaborate.

As a child, my elementary school was located on Highway 61 just north of the bustling metropolis of Bloomsdale, Missouri in northern Ste. Genevieve County.

At that time Bloomsdale had a Bi-Rite, a hardware store, a church, two gas stations and a couple of bars including the Dew Drop Inn. There were no stoplights in metropolitan Bloomsdale just a flashing yellow warning light where Mill Hill Road teed into Highway 61.

It was at this intersection that a giant pile of junk magically appeared on the morning of November first, the year I was in first-grade.

While the event may not have been a magical occurrence to the grown-ups who had to clean up the mess, it was to me, six-years-old and oblivious to the stupidity adults could talk themselves into after drinking excess quantities of alcoholic beverages.

But from my perspective, there was something incredibly cool about riding the bus to school that foggy November morning and seeing a mountain of junk appear out of the mist in the middle of the road. It was like spotting Big Foot or seeing a ghost.

This debris was apparently gathered from behind the various local businesses with most being dragged from the collection located in the back lot of the ironically named Speed's Service Station.

Speed was quite a nice fellow, but his business was no a Jiffy Lube. You didn't get a 10-minute oil change at his station. You either left your vehicle there and went next door to the Dew Drop Inn for a cold Coke and to listen to the old-timers complain about what was wrong with the world, or you walked over to the hardware store to browse their aisles.

I never heard who was actually responsible for assembling this giant pile of junk on Halloween night. Presumably, it was some of the evening regulars from the Dew Drop Inn who thought it was a fun "trick" to play after they had downed a few beers.

While the assortment of junk in the middle of the road was an awesome sight to a six-year-old, the oddest item of the entire collection had to be the old wooden outhouse.

I'm not sure if the outhouse was a part of the junkyard behind Speed's or if the tricksters scrounged it up from one of the other nearby properties, but it loomed above the collection of old tires and rusty car doors like some kind of refuse royalty.

While the location of this particular outhouse was both odd and funny to me, I was not unfamiliar with outdoor privies. At the time, my parent's farm still had one.

It was a weathered single-seater outhouse with the traditional half-moon cut into the door and a well-fed honeysuckle vine growing up and over the top of it like a mullet gone bad.

Oh sure, we had regular indoor plumbing in our home, but this privy was a lingering monument to an age of human-waste collection from days gone by that my dad had not yet gotten around to razing.

Eventually, he did just that, hacking the honeysuckle vine to pieces and dismembering the building board by board. He hauled those remains to the edge of our property and dumped them into a bottomless sinkhole that was the resting place for countless loads of castoffs from the farm.

And you would think that would be the end of that story, wouldn't you? But it's not.

While the Halloween shenanigans of the evening regulars at the Dew Drop Inn stopped by the time I was in the third grade, and Speed cleared out the mess from behind his station so there was no junk that could be appropriated for mischief, reports of strange, unexplained sightings began circulating between neighbors in northern Ste. Genevieve County.

Even to this day the stories persist.

It is said that on moonless autumn nights when the air is crisp and dense fog has rolled off of the meandering Establishment Creek, that the mist will sometimes part as you're rounding a blind-curve on some back road around Bloomsdale and a hulking Cyclops will appear, squatting in front of you squinting with its glowing eye.

As you slam on your brakes and fishtail on the loose gravel, the image of It -- whatever It is -- will linger for a second or two, before disappearing into the swirling mist.

You'll rub your eyes and think you're just imagining things. Maybe It was a big buck or It was the result of one beer too many at the Dew Drop Inn. Or perhaps It was just the fog playing tricks with your mind and with the lights of your highbeams.

But a little part of you will know the truth and you won't be able to forget what you really saw.

It was a weathered outhouse sporting a bad mullet.