Way out in the sticks

My wife’s cousin Carol who was raised around Ledger, Montana wrote the other day about rural Montana. She said she figures with Montana there’s rural, very rural, and way the hell out in the sticks rural. I know what she is talking about.

When I tell my kids we had running water out on the farm, I meant we went to the pump house about 75 yards from the house and we pumped water into pails and we ran to the house with the pails. I carried a lot of water buckets to the house, I always told the kids that is why my arms are so long from carrying all those buckets of water. When we wanted a bath we bathed in a long tin tub, with the water heated on the stove in teakettles and poured into the tub.

Did my best thinking here

Now the bathroom, it was a wooden shed fondly called the outhouse which consisted of a hole dug in the ground and inside a wooden seat on a platform over the hole. This fantastic structure was about 50 yards from the house. When you had to go really bad, you could run a very fast 50 yard dash. One sure didn’t linger in the winter though, when it was 30 below zero. When it was very cold if you didn’t have to go number 2 you could use what was called the slop bucket in the house. Of course the slop bucket got it’s contents emptied in the morning. If you had to go number 2 when it was that cold you really had to go.

Yes Carol, I know about way the hell out in the sticks, rural. Thanks for jogging my memory