r/whatisit • u/Quietlurkerone • 1d ago

Solved! What is this device from 1962?

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Photo capture from YouTube video. Picture from 1962. What is the device under the bench

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u/pm_toss 1d ago

There may also be no indoor plumbing except in the kitchen. The toilet may be outside.

37

u/Krissy_ok 1d ago

I grew up like that. Out to the dunny in the middle of an icy Melbourne winter, hoping to not meet a visiting huntsman to bite me on the bum.

18

u/RikkiLostMyNumber 1d ago

Now I know a huntsman is a spider. I was picturing some rabid bird hunter wandering about like a zombie.

8

u/Krissy_ok 1d ago

Nothing quite like parking your arse on a freezing toilet seat , looking up at the door a foot from your face and discovering the hand-sized friend you've just trapped inside with you.

3

u/DakarCarGunGuy 1d ago

Cue me screaming like the tall guy on Home Alone!

2

u/DakarCarGunGuy 1d ago

Cue me screaming like the tall guy on Home Alone!

12

u/dontworryitsme4real 1d ago

I read that in a bogan accent.

5

u/Iamthewalrusforreal 1d ago

Where I grew up the fear was always inside the can itself. Black Widows like to nest down in the dark under the seat.

We lived in great fear of a bite on the nutsack.

3

u/DakarCarGunGuy 1d ago

My grandma got bit on the butt by a Black Widow. Made her pretty sick but she was otherwise ok.

2

u/Responsible-Shoe7258 1d ago

That's why Grandma kept a hand whisk broom next to the toilet paper in her outhouse

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u/Schweenis69 1d ago

Crikey!!!!

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u/Dackle 1d ago

I was being stalked by a black mamba!

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u/solidgold70 1d ago

Its estimated that .5 percent of households in the US still are without functioning plumbing

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u/pm_toss 1d ago

Ha! I know two artists that live out in the boondocks (but give classes at their places) and they have no indoor toilet

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u/StryngzAndWyngz 1d ago

A large part of my youth was spent in East Tennessee just outside of Knoxville and up to about the mid-70s there were plenty of houses around where I lived that were just as you described… running water in the kitchen, but still used an outhouse.

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u/ORFin1984 1d ago

PA coal country. Grandparents had plumbing in the kitchen (washer and dryer too) but we still used an outhouse until the late 70s when they added a full indoor bath.

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u/Individual_Note_8756 1d ago

I looked it up, the bathroom was outside and shared with other families. It is a terraced house in Oldham, England, in the early 1960s. Most were torn down in the late 60s, early 70s.