She always hated camping. The bugs, sleeping on the ground, and the weird outhouse bathrooms. Yuck! Here at her grandfather’s place just outside of Bouche, Quebec, Canada, they may have been in a cabin, but it was still like camping. Hauling water in a bucket from the lake to wash dishes, to cook with, and wash your hands with before meals. Yuck!
And there was that hateful outhouse! Only during the day, of course. At night, there were buckets in each of the two bedrooms. Buckets that had to be washed out the next day before hauling the water.
In response to Charli Mills’ call for entries to her 99-word Flash Fiction for March 21st, the theme is based around a bucket of water. Care to participate? Follow this link…
https://carrotranch.com/2019/03/21/march-21-flash-fiction-challenge/
Annette Rochelle Aben 
Ha ha ha. OMG
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True story!
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YUCK
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DOUBLE YUCK for using the water buckets 😱😱😱
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Which were dipped in the SAME LAKE where we got the water for everything else. Honestly, this is where my Grandfather (dad’s dad) lived most of his adult life. When you pulled the plug on the drain hole in the kitchen sink, you were looking at the ground. Yuck!
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😱😱😱
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Yuck is right! Great response to the challenge, Annette! 😀 xo
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Thanks Vashti. Had my mother NOT blown up the outhouse, we might have had to stay there longer than a couple days… It was the one thing she did that I wish I could have given her an award for! 🙂
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She would have hated my childhood 😉
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Wow! That’s a true story, Annette? No wonder you hated the situation. Yuck, indeed! But your story is excellent and evocative.
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My Grandfather was a grandson of the Chief of the Ottawa Indians. He tried living like a “white man” for quite a while but in the end.. he just couldn’t. So yes, this was his summer home on a lake across from these mountains. We never knew him and the year after he died, my father took us to the cabin for a vacation. (uh) Drinking water, was actually something we got into the canoe or rowboat for and paddled across the lake to the mountains where we’d hike to a clear stream, fill our containers (no, not those metal buckets) and paddle back to the dock. Because my mother accidently blew up the outhouse the 2nd day we were there, we ended up staying with my Grandfather’s brother in a real house for the rest of the vacation. whew… Glad you liked the story, it was a remarkable experience (I was probably 13 at the time).
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Wow! You have such a fascinating history!
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Nooooo😱 Yuck, indeed!!
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LOL I’ll wait for a prompt to discuss campfire eating cows and blood sucking leeches in the lake…
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Haha, now I do hope for such a prompt too… lol!
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😱Oh, my goodness, there are no words from me about this, apart from these I’ve put in this sentence. Oh, and to say what a fabulous true story.
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God Bless us, everyone!
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This is very vivid, Annette. Well done.
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Thank you, Robbie. I read it to my Dad last night, and we had a good laugh. He asked me why I didn’t tell everyone about the cows….
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Oh, yuck! That reminds me of a story my grandfather used to tell about my grandmothers kin — he swore that the chamber pot from the night before was on the woodstove boiling beans the next day. 😀
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My dad swears there WERE more buckets… but we never saw them
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Yea, I wasn’t fond of those days, either.
Nice piece.
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🙂
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