有谁会把令人厌恶的厕所与门上雕着月牙儿的可爱小屋联系起来？信不信由你，户外厕所已经变成一种有着风雅韵味的庭院艺术了。想象一下吧，到后院草坪上那个你亲手搭建的小木屋去，就如同展开一次奇妙的旅行。

　　What 19th-century housewife could have guessed that her family’s unpleasant but necessary“little shack out back,”otherwise known as the outhouse, would function as a piece of kitschy yard art 100 years later?<注1> The outhouse seems to have emerged from the chronicles of history smelling like a rose.<注2>

　　Once purely utilitarian and slightly distasteful devices, outhouses are an icon of the rustic life our grandparents and great-grandparents endured.<注3> Today, many people convert old outhouses into lawn with a special style; some even go so far as to build new outhouses for display or, in rare cases, for actual use. It’s wonderful to see this forgotten piece of history come back again. Outhouses represent something more than just a place of relief. They are the echoes of a time long past, and a reminder to appreciate what we have.

　　Indoor comfort is something most of us have never lived without. It’s hard to envision getting fully dressed, putting on your shoes and hiking out to the backyard just to go potty in the middle of the night, and not being able to just sleepily wander to a warm bathroom across the hall.<注4> But now, it is a time for change.

　　Yard art

　　Outhouse crafts have become quite popular in the last decade. Today, in celebration of this artifact<注5>, people decorate and paint outhouses, plant flowers in them or use them for garden-tool storage.

　　As most people think, outhouses are aesthetically<注6> pleasing to look at,shavingsa shape that just catches the eye. It’s a little country. It’s a little history. It’s a little unique. It just seems that all wrapped into one package<注7>. A common addition to a decorated outhouse is a carved-out moon or star on the door, designs that were often seen when outhouses were in common use.<注8>

　　Build your own

　　Nowadays, there are a lot of companies selling outhouse kits<注9> you may need, which as they claim襛re great for yard or garden decoration, and fully operational<注10>? Each kit comes with step-by-step instructions, and in fact what you need for work is solely a power drill and a hammer. With them, you can create blue pine outhouses, cedar outhouses or an antique wood outhouse.

　　If you decide to build an outhouse that will actually be used, carefully evaluate placement. In the past, outhouses were often built near chicken coops so the stronger smell that emanated from the chickens could“mask”the unpleasant fumes of the outhouses.<注11> Most outhouses often are four-feet square by seven-feet tall. They would be placed anywhere from 50 to 150 feet away from the main house.

　　Political background

　　Outhouses have been involved with political issues. Attempting to pull the U.S. out of the Great Depression, FDR directed his Works Progress Administration,<注12> which put many Americans to work at a time when there was no work, to build roads, schools, sidewalks and other public facilities, including outhouses.

　　The thousands of government-built outhouses were admired for their sturdy<注13> construction, while homemade shack could be easily toppled by errant boys, or were so flimsily built that a person could throw a cat through them.<注14> Most families still relied on“outside facilities”In fact three-man teams would spend an average of 20 hours constructing each outhouse. If possible, farm families would only pay for materials while the WPA supplied the free labor. These were considered“fancy<注15> outhouses”because they had cement floors and ventilation shafts.<注16> Of course, these“fancy outhouses”were much more sanitary. Most outhouses were notorious for spreading disease, contaminating wells and breeding worms.

　　“By building modern outhouses with roofs that wouldn’t leak and cement floors that worms couldn’t penetrate,”some pointed out,“the WPA prevented a great deal of suffering and helped bring rural America into modern times.”

　　Anyway, whether you get the outhouse on your own or with the government’s help, you make it after all, don’t you? And building an outhouse is still in season<注17>, which certainly gives you something to think about.-