NOVEL NEXT Between the Pages - Update #3
When writing about small town prairie life in the 1950's, the outdoor latrine is a natural part of the scenery. In the photo I am hanging out the wash (old school clothespins in my hand), a memory that influences the imagery in chapter one of The Hammer. Our house in Fenwood had the luxury of duplex outhouse (note the two doors), but during the harsh prairie winters we had the option of using a covered five-gallon pail downstairs in our dug out dirt basement. I was fortunate I was too small to carry that pail out when it needed emptying.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
The trail to the outhouse was through a backyard littered with gopher holes and on one occasion, in my haste to get to the toilet, I tripped in one of those holes and broke my collarbone.
When I was six years old, we moved from Fenwood, Saskatchewan to Creston BC. Overnight I went from a windswept prairie to living on a mountainside, overlooking a valley filled with rivers and lakes. We had a reservoir stocked with rainbow trout in our back yard, a rock quarry to build forts in, and eight cherry trees on our yard. I thought I had died and gone to heaven and one of the key factors in that newfound joy was that our new home had two indoor flush toilets. I think this might be Corvan repeatedly ends up in the sewers below the cities of the Cor.