And wouldn't you know, I'm in there doing my situation and some lady comes in and says like, well, is there anybody in here? And I'm like, yeah, I'm in here. And she was, okay, our store closes in five minutes. I was like, okay, well, uh I'm working on it. So I cut it prematurely. I didn't get it all taken care of. Welcome back to privy. Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded here. First episode in the new privy cast recording studios.
uh I shared a few episodes back that ah my wife and I were moving and we have moved. We've actually been moved for uh almost a month now, but because of the timing of the last two episodes, us being in um Ontario, Oregon. And so I recorded, as you probably heard, from the very squeaky toilet, best Western of Ontario, Oregon. ah And so this is the first official episode of the new Privycast recording studios. So welcome. It's a bit more spacious.
And as you'll see probably from some social posts, I'm still working out how to set up the microphone. I need to buy a table. That's really what it comes down to. So don't judge me for my makeshift, like rigged up Lowe's home packing boxes. Yeah, it is what it is. know, we're doing our, yeah, welcome to Privy. I'm glad you're here. I hope that you're doing well. If you live in the United States of America, you just celebrated Independence Day and we're gonna talk a little more about that.
But I think I need to overshare here right at the front of this episode by saying that this is one of the first times where I sat down to record privy and nature called and it called loud. And you know, I had my computer and my microphone mostly all set up and wouldn't you know, I have to poop. And so like it's just all sitting here And I, you know, obviously I didn't record that. I ain't sick. But like, yeah. So it's still little funky smelling.
uh I did not turn the fan on because I don't want that sound in the background for you guys. So here we are. I hope you, yeah, too much information. But if this podcast embodies anything, it's how to share too much information upfront. So a few bathroom things for the week. uh I... You know, not a lot of crazy stuff as far as like cleaning and in that front.
But so Oregon, over here in Oregon, uh as of yesterday or two days ago at the point of recording this, I guess, ah we are officially back open, which means those public restrooms in all the parks and all those things are open and ready for use. um There's not really a mask mandate. We've caught up with that. And so...
Yeah, I've had the astute pleasure of, em I had a bathroom emergency, so me and a homie, you'll probably hear from him on the podcast here in not too long, but he and I went out for some Pokemon Go adventuring, and I had made some poor Taco Bell related, and I'm not trying to rag on Taco Bell, and I know how cliche that might sound, but I had made some very specific poor Taco Bell choices earlier that day.
And I pull up and I pick him up from his house and no sooner than he gets in my car than I have to drop a liquid Shaz again. And so I have to drive to Target to produce that Shaz five minutes before they close. And wouldn't you know, I'm in there doing my situation and some lady comes in and says like, well, is there anybody in here? And I'm like, yeah, I'm in here. And she goes, OK, our store closes in five minutes. I was like, OK, well, uh I'm working on it. So I cut it prematurely.
I didn't get it all taken care of, which is the worst situation. But then we went and played Pokemon Go and I essentially just like clenched it for the entire hour of playing Pokemon Go and it was fine. I've gotten used to that situation, clenching it. I used to have like an hour long bus ride, so you make do. But we're not talking about my bathroom situation week. No, no, that's not why we're here. We're here to talk about America, Merica. So happy Independence Day America.
It's a day late when this episode comes out, but whatever. Independence Day, for those who live outside of the United States, it is exactly what it sounds like. It is the day that America moved out of its mom's basement and said, you know what, I think I want to do this on my own. And this year is the 225th anniversary, as long as I am okay at math, that we signed the Declaration of Independence from England. Yeah. You can almost hear Yankee Doodle tootin' his little jig in the background.
Like, brr brr brr brr, yeah. So. Independence Day is a day in America where we celebrate rebellion against England and declaring our independence. At least that's what it was about because nowadays essentially, uh so I was at a pretty, it was actually a really fun get together for Independence Day last night and you know, I had some of my young adult folks and my youth folks together and we just kind of you know, spent time together.
I watched uh one homie almost fall to his death on a rope swing, so that's always a bonus. And then we watched fireworks. There's nothing that shouts America more than shooting Chinese pyrotechnics up in the air as we shout about it how much we love our country down below. I mean, yeah, there's nothing more American than that. yeah, nowadays we essentially just grill meat and eat watermelon and shoot explosives into the sky. America, dig it man.
Bye. In light of Independence Day, I wanted to share a finding of a... It's one of those things where Hunter goes on the internet and he finds a topic and I want to share my thoughts on this National Geographic article and topic. to transition this, so I want you to imagine with me a time capsule. And so, if you've ever participated in a time capsule, essentially what it is, is somebody says, you know what?
I wanna put together a time capsule that captures well the things that are important to us and yeah, that type thing. But what usually ends up happening is nobody can agree on what is important to them or what is most important to go in the capsule. And so then there's this like weird voting system where everybody has to compromise, whatever. But you fill it with treasures and things of meaning and you stick it in the ground only for it to be uncovered years later.
So imagine you did that and you uncovered that time capsule 200 or in this case about 220 years later. Think about what you would put in there and the list is different for everyone. know. Yeah. But before people buried time capsules. Or before people even had like trash situation. We're gonna talk about that in a second. Public waste disposal is a wonderful and beautiful thing that we take for granted.
But before we had that, many people just buried and discarded most of their broken and unused belongings. Also, if you are the people who lived in our previous home before we lived in it, They buried all their trash in the backyard and it was just like, what are we even doing? I would just be like doing yard work, raking my yard like a standard American. And all of a sudden just these shards of beer bottle glass are just surfacing out of nowhere. I dug up a license plate.
My wife yanked a like nasty old diaper out of the yard because these people just buried all their crap. So like this was common practice like 200 plus years ago. not in our era. So don't do that. If you were thinking about doing it, let me help you out. Just don't do it. In the days, so 200 years ago, the days of trash removal and waste services and waste management are years away. Like they're not even on the table.
On top of that, the sewage system was essentially non-existent in the days of early America. know, like Yankee Doodle, George Washington and Ben Franklin, they're all hanging out. They're kicking the rocks around the street. ah The sewage system is not a thing. Early America didn't have plumbing. And it's hard to like cook your noodle on that, but that's just the way it was.
And though the fight and signing for the independents were a lot to get pumped about, cleanliness and sanitation was something that they could care less about. You know, they were all on board for being independent from Lady England. I guess it was a king back then, but yeah, not as important to me. But they were all pumped about independence, but they could have cared less about cleanliness and sanitation and that type thing. Things, uh for lack of a better way of saying it, were not great.
Garbage was buried or discarded if you bathed. And let me just say this, if you ever start uh a sentence or uh some sort of thought with the idea of if you bathed, you've already messed up. It should be when I bathe and when I bathe often. But if you bathed back then, it was often no more than a small sponge bath where you wiped yourself off in a bucket of water or a sink if you were wealthy. Baths may have happened, but were viewed as a luxury item.
But baths are wax, we're not going to do that. That's not this episode. And many baths back then were wooden. that's gonna put a splinter in the old SS backside. Like, you don't wanna be plunging into a bath and just getting a splinter on your ham. Like, that's bad. Whoever thought of making a wooden bathtub or a wooden toilet seat for that matter? Like, I understand they probably sealed it and probably put a finish on it, but like, you could get a splinter, which is instantly awful.
Things were bleak and bathrooming wasn't much better. The sewer system, like I said, was pretty much non-existent. Most people in this colonial and revolutionary era of America did their deeds in a privy. Now that's a word we can get behind. These privies were pits were often dug so as to give the stink deposits a place to go when propelled from the SS backside. So they were using privies, traditional privies with the privy pit dug in the ground.
Privy pits were a common place to drop a deuce back then. I dropped one mere minutes ago in my home toilet, which is not a pit. It has running water and plumbing and I'm ever grateful for it. But back in the founding of our country, America, remember Independence Day, dig it. And they literally dug the pits to poop in. As we're going to explore, there were many non-human waste items that ended up in these privy pits.
And to explore this, we're actually going to talk about a particular privy pit, one uncovered in Philadelphia, not far from where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and not far from where it was read publicly a few days after its signing. In fact, Historians believe this privy pit dates to perhaps less than a week after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. America has declared itself free and somebody went and dug a poop hole.
The things found in this privy pit serve as a time capsule for life in America, literally days to years after the independence was declared. And if you hear that as I didn't go, what could they be, what in God's great earth could they possibly find in a deuce pit besides like dried up scat that is going to be gleaning and helpful for any type of information? it turns out it was common practice to just toss your unwanted and broken crap, not like your crap.
but like your unwanted and broken things into a privy pit when you were done and when they were deemed no longer useful you. Once, ah my daughter, I love her, but she tried to flush a toilet, uh no, she tried to flush a toy down the toilet and it was a catastrophe and thank God that it didn't pass that initial hole and just kind of stuck at the surface, but it's still like that stuff's ruined.
I think she also may have thrown my wife's floss pick holder container thingy, the entire storage thing, which is like a metal thing. I'm pretty sure she hucked that in there too. um She doesn't do that anymore, thank goodness. But nowadays you can't put stuff that is not like standard issue deposits down a toilet these days. You can't just do that. I mean people do it, but you really shouldn't even like flush hygiene products down the toilet. But back then they threw all sorts of crap in there.
They threw all sorts of junk in these privy pits. And other things too. And the pit in question, the pit that we're talking about today, was uncovered at the corner of 3rd Street South and Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. They date the digging of this pit off records that like city records and public records to about July 10th, 1776. Independence declared time to dig a giant hole to scat in. Nothing says freedom like digging a big hole and pooping in it.
It is guessed again from records that Mary and Benjamin Humphreys bought a home at this location and thus dug their pit in this response. So they bought a home, they dig these, we gotta poop somewhere. So they dig a big hole to go take a big hole. Public record, however, can only tell you so much. So to really get a sense, you have to get elbow deep into the privy pit and root around in there and find what's in there. And what they found in this privy pit is wild and it is telling.
First, there were remains of German tankards and Chinese porcelain, like pieces of porcelain glass are found in the pit. They're broken, but they are found. And these indicate that even pre-independence, there was trade centers in America being experienced even in the midst of English occupation and control. However, this particular pit, so that's like, That type stuff like German tankers and Chinese like whatever. That's normal stuff to find in a privy pit.
And if you hear that and you go like what in the world? Yeah, different times. But in this particular pit, was it was unique in a few ways because rather than finding what would be called like common household trash and items, they found dozens of broken drinking glasses, tankards, serving dishes, pipes, and a hundred or more bottles used for storing what I will call illicit beverages. Para-finalia. this was the privy pit, it would seem, of a tavern.
But what is interesting is that the building at the corner of 3rd Street and Chestnut was a private residence, not a tavern. It appears that the Humphreys were operating an illegal tavern for years. This is also likely explains where there are upwards of 10 privy pits located on the site of 3rd and Chestnut. Like one residence is probably not going to need that many pits, but they found 10 of them because these folks were operating in uh like a back street deal tavern.
And nothing says American freedom like using that newfound freedom to operate an illegal tavern out of your home mere months and years after declaring independence. America. Except it seems Mrs. Humphreys was arrested about seven years into this ordeal, uh charged for operating an illegal tavern, I think this is more what the charge was for, but operating a brothel out of her home. More interesting is a piece of pottery recovered from the Stankhole.
Here's the thing, these taverns would normally be the center for political life, like when men in Unfortunately, like it was primarily men who were going out to these things at the time. When they went out and they went to the taverns, they sat around and drank their hooch. They would talk about the things of society, politics. They probably ragged on England plenty. But here's the thing. And this is the Humphreys home that is operating as a tavern. And so they're getting a mix here.
And there is this shattered fragment of Punchbowl, which When you puzzle it together, like you have this big broken like jigsaw puzzle of Punchbowl. And when you like do the Punchbowl jigsaw puzzle and you puzzle. By the way, I heart this has nothing to do with bathrooms, but I, know, it's my podcast. So here we go. Puzzles are activities. They are not games. You do not play a puzzle. If you say I'm going to go play a puzzle, you've said it wrong. You do a puzzle. Puzzles are activities.
They are not games. Nobody wins a puzzle. Nobody really enjoys puzzles. like, yeah, puzzles are activities, not games. But anyway, if you puzzle this thing, this punch bowl together, it reads, we admire riches and are in love with idleness. This was printed on a punch bowl depicting the British ship, the Trifinia. And this ship depicts, or this bowl, rather, depicts a waving a British flag and it is guessed that the Punchbowl was a piece of trade coming back from Liverpool on the ship Trypinaea.
The ship Trypinaea is referenced as being one of the vessels they sent their correspondents and so when they wrote calling out the Stamp Act, the Stamp Act where they began to address the unreasonable taxes that England was levying against America at the time. It is believed that the Trifinia is one of the ships that would have carried that correspondence back to the king.
And so it seems the Humphreys may have bought this punch bowl as a way of remembering and as a heirloom and a trinket and a kind of a souvenir. remembering this vessel that carried the correspondence of independence across the ocean. This boat very well may have carried some of the early writings to England that began the movements that resulted in the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It's wild stuff, and we find out about this all from digging around in a hole where people pooped.
But wait, there's more. That inscription. My foot just fully fell asleep. We're living in the best of times right now. That inscription, we admire riches and are in love with idleness, is a quote from the Roman Senator Marcus Cato. He said this to the Senate in 63 BCE and later, Cato's ideals were put into a body of work wherein his ideas were expounded. So Roman Senator Marcus Cato writes this to the entire Roman Senate 63 years. This is before Jesus. Here we go.
And namely, Cato's charge is this. He is stressing, Marcus Cato is stressing to the Roman Senate, like... I mean, pushing 2,000 years before the Declaration of Independence, he is stressing individual liberty over government tyranny and corruption. That's the heart of the Declaration of Independence. And in case we forgot, the Declaration reads that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, and this is where think Marcus Cato would nod his head in agreement.
It is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government. Marcus Cato spoke to the Roman Senate in 63 BCE stressing the need for individual liberty over government tyranny and he even stressed that when the government is unfit to lead its people, it is the people's job to change the government. Fast forward, 1776. Early colonial America believes they are being unjustly taxed.
write to a king across the ocean, say we don't like your tax, your tax is bad, we're not represented. A war starts and in time it is won and the Declaration of Independence is signed. and it is likely carried back on a boat that is delivered to England and that boat is then printed on a punch bowl that we find in the privy pit of a tavern. And we make all these connections to regular American life at the time all because we found privy pits and we dug where people pooped. Happy birthday America.
Dig it. Thank you so much for joining us. As always, we would love for you to connect with us on social media. That's at privycast, all social media. And even if it's not just to talk about bathrooms, even if it's just to say hi, talk about stuff. If you want to shout at me about Pokemon Go or like whatever, you know. Yeah, we just want to build the community at privycast. We'd also love to hear from you. Just say hi. It doesn't have to be about bathroom stuff. It can be. We like that.
But privycast at gmail.com. If you want to shoot us an email, say hello. We'd love to hear from you. Yeah, as we try to grow this community and this podcast. As always, word of mouth is huge. If you can share the... share the show with a friend, say, hey, know, there's this dweeb and he makes this thing about bathrooms and I think you'd enjoy it. Sharing the show that way is huge. So if you could do that, that would be super appreciated.
And if your podcast catcher of choice allows you to leave a review, five star option is our preferred, but you know, here we are. Thanks again to Kevin McLeod for the use of Barroom of Ballet as our intro and outro music. You can find Kevin's music at incompetech.org and it's licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Thanks Kevin. This has been another episode of Privy. And now, as always, don't forget to flush.