Iowa 'Outhouse lady' gives lessons in rural history, including the bygone times of the shack out back

Teresa Minard, a retired elementary schoolteacher from Clarinda, Iowa, a 5,600 population town in the southwestern corner of the state, has spent the past decade giving lectures on a growing array of everyday rural history, including the somewhat forgotten realm of outhouses, Kyle Munson reports for the Des Moines Register. "She said that Iowans under age 50 typically 'have no clue' about outhouse culture before indoor plumbing finally reached nearly every corner of rural America in the 1950s." (Register photo by Bill Neibergall: Outhouse races at the Iowa State Fair)

Minard told Munson, “If you lived in rural Iowa or rural anywhere else, that was the only way of life in the early part of the (20th) century and before that. That’s all there was, the little house out back.” She said audiences "like to reminisce, but they don’t want to go back to that era.” But she' so much more than the Outhouse Lady, Munson writes. "Her true specialty seems to be taking stock of the artifacts of everyday rural life to create a community forum for the rich (and often forgotten) social history that they represent." Her other programs include “Aprons on a Clothesline,” “Grandma’s Old Chicken House, Papa’s Produce,” dairy farm history, feed sacks as fabric, vintage pillow cases, and many other subjects. (Read more)