Another use for paint tins

When I was a kid we lived at my grandmothers house and every night when we went to bed we had a china vessel placed underneath our beds. Each morning that vessel was emptied. After my mother remarried and we moved into our own house we had analogous vessels placed under our beds but, being poorer than church mice, those vessels were actually empty paint tins. Truth to tell, my grandmother was as poor as we were but also a lot older; somewhere along the way she'd managed to collect some china piss-pots.

I remember that paint tin beneath my bed as late as 1967 though I really don't remember having one later than then. Given that we had no sewage until 1978, when I'd long since departed that house, I'm not sure why. Let me tell you, living in a house with no sewage or septic tank was the pits. My folks hadn't opted for the septic tank because 'sewage is just around the corner' in 1966, when they signed the contract for that new house. Oh, and this was in a suburb 7 miles from the Melbourne Central Business District.

What we got instead was a small shed a few metres from the backdoor. A large can changed weekly and a simulacrum of a toilet seat over said can. You'd better hope that everyone takes a dump a few times a week away from the house; if we didn't the seat cover didn't close properly by the 6th day. (Think about it). In winter it was bad enough, a small unheated outhouse. In summer we'd pour bottle after bottle of phenol into it to allay the stench.

Once a week a smelly truck pulled up outside the house and a man wearing a special hat, not unlike a top hat, would march up the driveway. He'd knock politely, lest someone be inside, and failing an answer he'd open the door, raise the seat and grab that can full of excrement by two handles and hoist it up above his head and carry it on top of that hat. I remember him as a thin man but my god, he must have been strong!

Apochryhal stories abounded about him missing a step and spilling his load of excrement down the path but I never saw him miss a beat.

It used to be the tradition that each house would leave some beer outside at Christmas for the postman, the milkman, the garbage man and the dunny man. The dunny man always got a round dozen bottles; twice his nearest rival. He earned and deserved every bottle he got!

I didn't live in a house with an inside dunny until I was 23. By strange coincidence, I was the same age when I first lived in a house with a telephone. That might explain why I don't much like the telephone but I surely do like the inside flush toilet!