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As a guess, bear with me, use of the “brick shithouse” expression is more rural than urban. Drat. One sentence in and I’m unhappy having used shithouse, same would be true for shitter. Don’t like the term when so many venerable and less crude terms can be applied. Two-holer, outhouse, backhouse, necessary, jakes, privy and dansker refer to the same useful building and necessary function. But, brick shithouse is the expression, so let’s go.

In your mind, what’s the meaning behind brick toilet? (Toilet doesn’t carry an image of a small building, but I had to try.) Does reference to a brick outhouse call up excess or quality? I’d lean toward the overdoing it side. 

A jakes built of brick would be way more than required for the purpose. An outhouse isn’t a place sought for atmosphere or view. Get in, get it done and get out. Humble wood panels work same as a mural mosaic wall for privacy, but at less cost and easier construction.

Regarding the brick back house, impracticality and difficulty of construction are part of my balk. But why? Don’t I want nicer things in a better world? Not necessarily. 

In fact, it often (too frequently) gripes my bejeeber seeing pointless architectural elegance that runs up costs without improving anything. A hall is a hall. Give it pretty curves and scallops. Still a hall. How pretty does it have to be to walk down? 

But back to the privy question. If you with your private resources feel you need a sterling handbasin or 22K commode, well, fine, go for it. Make the gold and silversmiths happy. But when the bright idea of prettying up (often claiming minimal cost to gain approval) say, a hospital hallway with swoops, galleries and a monument to Mars I have questions. 

Our already complex societal structures didn’t just happen. A century ago, houses had individual privies of simple build. When the pit looked (or smelled) full a new hole was dug, the old building was moved to its new place and soil from new hole went into old pit. 

Simple enough, but not if the privy was tons of brick and mortar or the privy was large enough to serve multiple families. Waste handling was simple and efficient where there was ample space. 

For apartments or tenements, it was a mess. All cultures from hunter-gatherer to early-urban dealt with the issue through low density, frequent moves or development of water and sewer systems.

The way we’d deal with a plain wooden outhouse versus a brick model is but a part. Simple as moving a wood outhouse might be, it is not a solution for high density. No matter how sturdy and pleasant a brick version might be made, the “soil” it accumulates must be somehow dealt with. Tons of waste doesn’t go away by itself. 

And that’s still not all because where sewer mains are the norm there’s another system of rainwater or storm drains that must be kept. A two-holer in the country with open ground all around doesn’t face the challenge of an urban setting where runoff from roofs and paving has nowhere to go. 

Easily ignored today, a century ago the downtowns of Superior and Duluth had manure issues caused by horses drawing delivery wagons. In wet periods crossing some streets meant having to negotiate an ankle-deep slurry of manure slush. Very green and free of petroleum byproducts, but with other concerns and issues. 

What doing this instead of that boils down to is one set of consequences versus another or this solution bringing us to that problem. Soon as we’re presented with a proposed solution we ought ask “then what?”

Another thing to keep in mind regarding the virtues and value of fine brick edifices is the “sell.” The higher cost of the brick version says there’s an incentive for someone, whether brick makers or masons and etc. 

Often times (maybe most often) something presented as better didn’t arrive out of the blue. Most likely it’s being sold, same as a great deal of the info flung at us in daily heaps, piles and barrages of stuff all being sold as sensational-new-ground-breaking and so forth in terms that change history by turning flimsy conjecture into fresh fact. 

A thing to be damn happy and proud of is The Reader being noticeably less into that mode than most of the media eager to grab attention with falsehoods rather than to plod forward with dull old investigating or reportage. 

The tactic of sales by attention grabbing is, I suspect, sociality dangerous in the way of selling sizzle with no meat. If you stop a moment after the hype and ask some basic questions you might find very little to go on. Or maybe just some more foregone fluff.

I recall a schooled environmental telling me an elevated walkway had to be constructed so shade-loving plants had a place to live. You mean that for 10,000 years since the glaciers left those poor shade lovers had to get by without us building things for them to live under? How did they survive without us? 

An ostensibly worthy and reasonable statement from a certified expert is sometimes no more than “I say so” and “I can make you.”

Another example: in my early years I went to a U Counselor about a relationship concern. After listening, the white-coated professional gave her opinion that I was “emotionally distant and cold.” Fair enough. An apt description ruined when she said I needed to “listen more.” Listen? 

Was she daft? 

Listen was most of what I did. Endless listening to neverending babble like rain on a metal roof droning away until I sometimes thought being six feet under a reward, a pleasant break from the noise. Not that I didn’t perfectly enjoy hearing frequent repetitions of my failures. But frankly, verbal flogging improved neither my mood nor the situation. Taking what I saw as the expert’s hint about emotional distance, I used physical distance. Haven’t seen that girl since.

Perhaps the brick outhouse reminds us of false value.