Cap'n Fred and His Carpentry Barn
© 2001 James David Pearce
No getting around it, when it came to architect's drawing tools, a hammer, a nail and a handsaw, Cap'n Fred was a real artist.
And he was a hard-working man.
Elmo often said that Cap'n Fred was so smart and so hard-working that he could draw you a six-room house ~ tell you how many 4x4s, 2x6s, 2x4s and 1x4s, shingles, and pounds of 10-penny and 20-penny nails you needed to buy ~ and then saw and hammer and put the whole thing together for you almost by himself.
(Of course, he might have to call on some hapless "helper" to hold the other end of an occasional board.)
So it was fortunate that when Cap'n Fred rented the property out near the cemetery in early 1933, it came with a large floored barn between the big old house and the Big Ditch that ran at an angle along the eastern lot line.
The barn had a small front door, a wide side door and several small windows to let in daylight ~ just the thing for a house-builder who was just fully coming to understand that nobody else was going to be building any more houses in Hertford County for a while.
The barn meant that when he couldn't find any pickup carpentry work around the little town, he had a place out of the rain and the weather to hone his wood-working talents and possibly profit a little in a private-enterprise manner.
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So on rainy days ~ and sunny days when nobody else wanted to pay for any hammering and nailing ~ Cap'n Fred would go scrounging around the lumber mill for scraps that he'd drag home to his barn, and then he'd sit and stare at them until he could figure some way to use them to make something.
And out of his scraps, he made "medicine" cabinets, clothes cabinets, kitchen cabinets, outdoor tables and outdoor chairs.
The latter would be displayed in the front yard by the St. Johns Road, with hand-lettered signs urging passersby to come into the barn and see the nicer stuff that was being held back out of the mud and the rain ~ but still was for sale at depression prices.
He didn't make a lot of money at this, but there was a little now and then.
More often, there was a swap ~ with somebody turning over some chickens and eggs, and once even a hog ~ to come into ownership of some of Cap'n Fred's scrap-lumber indoor-and-outdoor artwork.
As was said, he didn't make enough money to take any to the bank, but his enterprise did help to put a little extra food on the table on occasion.
So he decided to branch out a little.
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The first good new idea he came up with was "chamber-chairs."
At this time, Cap'n Fred's family was domiciled in a region of the country where there was no such thing as plumbing, or "running water" and sewer pipes.
And this meant ~ in addition to pumping the drinking water out of the ground or pulling it up in a bucket from a shallow well ~ that people who had to go to the toilet usually had to go to a little house away out in the back lot that sat over a fairly large hole in the ground.
The little house, in addition to an occasional human, had various other occupants at various times ~ including flies, bees, hornets and yellow-jackets ~ and snakes. All in all, not a very inviting place that encouraged anyone to linger to read much in the Sears Roebuck catalogs that rested next to the bench seat.
And that of course resulted in a lot of folks wishing they could go to the toilet inside the house ~ scandalous though the idea might seem to some country people at the time.
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The answer to the problem rested in the use of "chamber-pots," fairly large buckets with smooth rounded top edges into which you poured a little pumped water.
These chamber-pots usually sat in the "bed-chamber" ~ hence the name.
But they didn't look the best, and they were quite uncomfortable to use for anybody over the age of three.
Unless you were the Queen of England or owned some slaves or something, after each use you had to take these things out to the little house in the back lot and "flush" them there.
So taking a page from some of the folks back in the Old Country ~ England ~ and one of its more noted heavyweight kings ~ Henry the Eighth ~ the country folk in the Eastern North Carolina swamps came up with "chamber-chairs."
These pieces of bedroom furniture were large, heavy and comfortable enough for even a fairly large adult.
They were made with a little shelf underneath to hold an over-size chamber-pot in the desired position ~ and a false seat that when raised revealed another seat with a fair-size hole in it.
They became quite popular ~ particularly on cold, snowy winter nights.
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Cap'n Fred ~ very good with straight-line construction ~ began to design and build some of the best.
And on sunny days, when there was nothing else to do, he would put a couple of them out in the front yard along with the ladder-back yard chairs ~ with the hand-lettered signs telling passersby of their virtues and of the further values in the old barn.
His wife, Nora, who sometimes on Sunday after church liked to sit in the front yard ~ often in one of his yard chairs ~ wasn't too pleased when the chamber-chairs were added to the sales display.
But she was a wife of the olden type ~ not much inclined to boss around the master of the household or even to disagree with him. This fact was bolstered by the knowledge that she was Cap'n Fred's Second Wife ~ and also a country girl young enough to be his daughter, with five of his children which there was no way to feed if he didn't round up a little hard cash now and then.
So she kept her counsel ~ swallowed her Sunday afternoon pride, so to speak ~ and sat out in the front yard next to his chamber-chair display.
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As the paying carpentry jobs dwindled still further with the deepening of the depression, Fred found himself with more and more time to devote to his scrap-lumber mini-manufacturing enterprise.
And he came up with something bigger to build in his old barn in his spare time.
Not only were there very few nice places to sit when you went to the toilet ~ there were very few nice toilets themselves.
Most of them were just old ramshackle structures that some jack-leg had hammered together ~ with seats that didn't "sit" and "doors" that wouldn't fit.
Most people just used them until they collapsed and fell into the pit themselves, and then they went off somewhere else in the yard, dug a new pit and hammered together something else over it to make do.
In short, nobody was putting much time or effort into the construction of better outhouses.
Cap'n Fred set out to remedy this market deficit.
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He had nothing against digging a new pit now and then. But he decided to build his new outhouses for comfort ~ and sturdiness ~ so sturdy, in fact, that when circumstances called for a new pit, a mule and cart could be attached to his structures and they could be hauled away and re-used at the new location.
His double seats were comfortable, and had wooden covers and a little open-ended box between them to hold catalogs.
His doors fit, and opened and closed with aplomb.
There were air vents around the bottom edges and air vents at the edges of the slanted roofs.
There were hooks ~ to hold heavy-duty fly-swatters for yellow-jackets, and a hoe that was handy when snakes suddenly decided to come in from the sunshine.
All the conveniences.
~~~~~~~~~
The family crisis came quickly. On a Sunday afternoon.
Cap'n Fred didn't attend church. He'd been asked by the preacher, but had responded that all he had to wear to church was a pair of bib overalls.
When the preacher assured him that bib overalls would be perfectly suitable attire for a member of the Faith in his church, Fred had told him that the day the preacher would wear a pair of bib overalls in the pulpit would be the day that Fred would wear a pair of bib overalls in the congregation.
The preacher of course didn't respond, and Fred didn't go to church.
Nora attended church faithfully. And also remained a good, hard-working, faithful wife.
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But the Sunday afternoon she brought her children back from the House of Worship and walked into the front yard ~ and stopped and stared at the sight of Cap'n Fred's Grade A Outhouse ~ right next to the ditch at the side of the St. Johns Road in front of her favorite yard chair ~ she rebelled for the first time in her wedded life.
"James Frederick Pearce," said Nora. "I'm taking these young 'uns and we're going to Mama's.
"I'm not coming into the house ~ and I am not going to fix you any dinner.
"If you want us back here again ~ and you want me to cook any more dinners ~ you send word to Mama's and let me know where this outhouse rests.
"And if it's somewhere besides the front yard, I might come home and I might not ~ depending."
She spread her arms and herded her brood back into the St. Johns Road, headed toward town ~ and Mama's.
~~~~~~~~~
Cap'n Fred surrendered, moved his Grade A Outhouse back through the wide door into the old barn, and sent word to Nora that he was ready for lunch.
And five little Pearces lived several more years in the sheltering arms of a two-parent family.
With one of the best outhouses in the neighborhood.
And two comfortable chamber-chairs in the bed-chambers.
"Cap'n Fred," Nora and the kids, c. 1935
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