The Specialist by Charles Sale

I did have a couple of ideas planned for today, but I forgot to take a photo...so this little book was sticking out from under something.

The guy in the book is a carpenter by trade, but he decides to specialise in privvy building. The book was first published in the 1930's.

The book interests me because the farmhouses and places where I lived as a child there was no running water (apart from a stream under the privvy) and you had a plank with a hole cut in it. One place had only one hole, and it was nicely finished off and rounded so was actually quite comfortable. But the other place had three holes in the plank. This privvy was at the end of the apple orchard over the stream. The pigs lived in the apple orchard and nosed around the privvy... Anyway in this privvy was a large hole, a medium hole, and a child sized hole, all cut out of the same plank. It was was very nicely sanded down too. Very smooth.

So this book, about Lem Putt, who was a specialist privvy maker in the 1930's, was interesting to me.

It is a gently humerous book. I don't know if you will be able to read the words of the two pages I have photographed but he is going up the hill with his little woman. He is going to admire his piece de resistance, an eight holer.