By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
While we tend to take modern plumbing for granted, we aren’t too many generations removed from trips to freezing outhouses and boiling water on the stove for a bath. Some of us may have experienced this firsthand, maybe even as part of our day-to-day lives for an extended period of time. But even a brief experience with outdoor toilets can make you thankful for the experience of indoor toilets and hot running water.
The point is indoor plumbing is a grand thing. But people have been using the bathroom much longer than we’ve had plumbing. They’ve also been congregating in cities and villages for just as long.
Outhouses and privies on a farm or rural homestead are one thing. But it just isn’t practical for every home in a town or city to fill in the hole and move the outhouse when it gets full. Vacuum trucks, of the sort that pump septic tanks and porta-johns, are even newer than indoor plumbing.
So what did folks in urban medieval Europe do to handle this waste problem?
They hired folks known as “gong farmers” to clean out their privies for them. These gong farmers – whose name derived from the Old English “gang” for “to go” – or “night men” as they were sometimes called, came under cover of darkness, while the rest of the town slept, to take away the “night soil” from their cesspits and privies.
You may also be asking yourself, “Jeremy, why are you spending so much time talking about poo?”
Well, for a couple of reasons – one being a toddler and the other a new puppy.
Yup, potty training is underway in our home, and I find myself wishing more and more for a good gong farmer for hire, to help clean up the various accidents.
Especially the ones the puppy leaves.
While this is all old-hat for my partner, it’s brand new to me. I’ve never had to potty train a dog before. All the dogs I had growing up were outdoor, or mostly outdoor pets. I find myself confused by his schedule and patterns. I’ll see him sniffing, take him outside, and then after playing in the grass for fifteen minutes he’ll come back in and go on the floor.
Or he’ll be asleep next to me in the office while I write, I’ll get up to fetch something, and come back to find him asleep in the same spot but a “present” left somewhere between where I’m coming from and my desk chair. It won’t have been there before I got up, but it will be when I return five minutes later. I’m not sure if it’s magic, spite, or just an incredibly odd coincidence of timing, but it’s uncanny whatever it is; and there are days I’d be willing to pay someone else to deal with it.
This canine gong farmer would ideally be responsible for disposing of all yard leavings for the family – no small task with three dogs – and helping make sure the puppy made his deposits there instead of in the hallway as well.
Bonus, since cleaning up puppy poop doesn’t carry near the stigma that cleaning cesspits did in the sixteenth century, you could do your night man duties during the day if you like!
Of course, once he’s trained, there wouldn’t be as much need, and folks deserve steady work, so I’m doubtful I’ll find anyone, even as glamorous as the job and title are. So, I guess I’ll have to keep cleaning up these messes myself instead of calling for my gong farmer to clear it up.
C’est la vie.
At least I don’t have to potty train a toddler in an outhouse during the winter. That’s an undeniable blessing.
Jeremy D. Wells can be reached at editor@cartercountytimes.com
