Outhouses a Unique Reminder of a Simpler Time

By H.H. HOWZE  Five relict outhouses in the Round Top city limits recall a time before indoor plumbing in the town, an era within the memory of Round Top residents of a certain age. 

Those were the times when a “bathroom” came with a path.

Also known by many other names, an outhouse is a small structure, separate from a main building, which covers a pit latrine. 

Although in violation of the county wastewater regulations, the duplex outhouse behind M.E. Schulze’s Grocery in Round Top was in regular use  until he closed his business just a few years ago. 

One day at Merton’s, as the place was known, a van stopped out front and two or three high school girls came in and asked for the bathroom. They were directed out the back door. Less than a minute later they reentered by the same door and hurried back out the front. Apparently they didn’t care for the facilities, even though the womens’ side was outfitted with a red toilet seat.

“Mayor Don Nagel installed the first septic tank in town about 1950,” Round Top native Doug Knutzen recalled. 

Nagel also installed the first septic tank in town for indoor plumbing. Water came from pumps on local wells. The town got water from West End Water Supply in Industry starting in 1978 when the lines were extended from Shelby.

“We knocked a lot of windows out of the courthouse, playing ball on the town square,” Knutzen recalled in a phone call earlier this week. Of course, the windows had to be repaired by the perpetrators. 

The school (seven grades)was next to the Bethlehem Lutheran Church. Discipline was  “old school.” “If you got a whipping at school, it wasn’t anything compared to the one you got at home,” Knutzen said. 

Town marshall Ernst Emmerich, a World War I veteran, ran a tight ship in those days – without a gun. Knutzen recalled an incident when a man had been creating a disturbance arguing with his wife.

“I saw Emmerich hit the man across the back with his cane and then handcuff him with a dog collar,” Knutzen said. “Get in my pickup,” the marshall instructed him. “If you cool off, I’ll take you home, otherwise I’ll take you to jail.”

Round Top State Bank president Ronny Sacks remembers Emmerich as well. “He was marshall for about 45 years, until the ‘60s,” Sacks recalled. “He was also the town barber and ran a garage with my grandfather.”

The Round Top bank president in those days was Edgar Fricke. For a while the bank had no telephone. Customers had to call Nagel’s service station around the corner to summon Mr. Fricke to the phone.

Another thing. “When someone died, the church bell rang all day on the day of the funeral,” Knutzen said.

How does Knutzen feel about all the newcomers and changes in town?

“Ninety-percent of them are fine people,” he said, “but if you want too much change, you need to stay where you came from.”