ENOCHVILLE — Betty Blevins grew up in the Rowan County countryside and remembers a childhood filled with simple pleasures — games of hide-and-go-seek and evenings spent catching fireflies included.
She also remembers what it was like to make her way across the yard to an outhouse, a small wooden structure located at the rear of the family’s property.
Those childhood treks left her with a lifelong appreciation for running water and indoor bathrooms.
“Some people take toilets totally for granted,” said Blevins, 64. “I don’t.”
Blevins and her husband, Bob, live in a house located on the same property where she was raised. Though her family homeplace has been moved, the outhouse that stood behind it still exists. About five years ago, Betty Blevins, a retired teacher assistant at Enochville Elementary School, had her husband move the outhouse to a site closer to their own home.
She then decorated the door of the outhouse with a wreath. The structure is no longer functional, Blevins is quick to remind visitors, though she said it serves as something of a conversation piece.
“Several people asked if they could buy it,” Blevins said. “I just decided to keep it. It was my mom and dad’s and I had the space for it. It’s funny, but I have a sort of sentimental attachment to it.”
The Blevins’ outhouse has an interesting history to it.
The concrete base for the structure was built by workers with the Works Project Administration, a Depression-era government program that sought to put unemployed men to work.
One of the jobs of the WPA was to travel to rural areas to build concrete foundations on which outhouses could be built. The structures’ wooden foundations were known to easily rot, making the concrete bases a welcome addition.
Those WPA workers also put covers on the outhouse holes that could be raised or lowered. Such additions were apparently considered pretty fancy in their day.
When Bill Blevins moved the outhouse, he also moved its original concrete slab – tying a chain around the huge chunk of cement and pulling it behind his pickup truck.
He seems to take as much pride as his wife in the preserved outhouse.
He’s even researched the history of outhouses, going on the Internet to learn all kinds of fun facts about these “necessary rooms.”
For instance, Bill Blevins has found material that explains the most recognizable symbol of the outhouse – the crescent moon cut into a privy door.
According to the Internet, originally, outhouses were adorned with either moons (in colonial days, the symbol for women) or stars (the symbol for men).
Since the outhouses for females were better maintained than their counterparts for males, they lasted longer. Eventually, both sexes used outhouses adorned with the shape of a moon.
Blevins also has information that tells of outhouses behind 19th century hotels often having as many as a dozen holes.
All of which only fuels Blevins’ interest in researching outhouses.
“It’s all original,” he reminds anyone who stops by the family home near Enochville Elementary. “The wood and all, it’s just like it was when it was built.”
That was in 1938. Betty Blevins said her parents, Ralph and Vassie Archer, continued to use the outhouse until 1962.
“We were just country people,” Betty Blevins said. “We didn’t have much, but I had a wonderful childhood.”
Lynn Aldridge, Rowan County’s environmental health supervisor, said he doesn’t know of any outhouses still in use in Rowan County on a daily basis. He did say, however, that along the Yadkin River, there are a number of trailers and other structures used on weekends that are still served by such privies.
Contact Steve Huffman at 704-797-4247 or shuffman@salisburypost.com
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