Monster House

Arkansas Outhouse Built in 1947

Rosie, Arkansas on Highway 14

Featured at jldr.com's Outhouses of America Tour

(Photo from J. Searing)

This Arkansas outhouse stands just outside the small town of Rosie, which lies southeast of Batesville, an old White River town located where the Ozarks meet the flatlands. My maternal grandmother grew up partly in the White River Hills, the hollows where some of our Cherokee ancestors had found isolation and security, but mostly in the small, remote town of Zion, about 25 miles into the Ozarks from Batesville and not far from Melbourne. For a visual tour of the general area, see the Exploring Izard County blog.

But don't be fooled by the quaint photo above or the lovely scenes on the Exploring Izard County blog. The Ozark outhouse was truly a monster house.

Within its darkness awaits a gaping hole emanating the odor of evil and threatening to swallow your most vulnerable parts, but that's hardly the worst of it. No, the worst arrives when your eyes have adjusted just enough for you to glance up and dimly perceive, nestled against the ceiling over your head, watching you ... closely, intently, viciously, wasps.

Sometimes the heavy dull-red kind that you'd watched circling the sanctuary air during those hot Sunday preachings, other times the more agile black-and-yellow striped kind that could fly like hot darts at your eyes ... from nests as big as a large frying pan.

And all you could do in self-defense was remain gravely still ... like some poor dead mensch sitting.