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Yup, baths at great grandma's were just as you described them. Pump the water, put it on the wood stove to heat, dump it in the big tin washtub. Hoped you weren't the last person to take a bath. Great granny to a liking to Tide and used it to scrub my brother and I down. Lord, our skin was brand new by the time she took several layers off of it.

Chamber pots under the beds were only for use in the winter. If you had to go at night in the spring, summer, or fall, it was the outhouse for you. Kerosene lantern went with you if there wasn't enough moon to see by. Scary place at night.

Granny had a four room house, with a pantry that was turned into a bathroom later when she got plumbing. There was a stove that ran on what granny called fuel oil in the living room and a wood stove in the kitchen. Whatever heat the bedrooms felt came in from the kitchen or living room. Granny would heat bricks on the wood stove and put them under the covers at the end of the bed. Sure made your feet toasty. But if you had to go in the middle of the night in the winter, you dropped your feet on the cold rose linoleum, reached under the bed and pulled out the chamber pot (also with roses on it. My mom say a lady use one just like it at a fancy sit down meal decades later for a gravy boat. Mom said she just couldn't eat any gravy, she just couldn't!) and you would lower your poor bottom onto that cold china.....things were a lot harder then; but in some ways, a lot happier too.

The gravy boat story was funny as the dickens....LOL. But the worse was when someone pooed in the pot in the middle of the night. No one would own up to it....PU

The kids were allowed to use the chamber pot year round, you never knew what you would run into using the out house after dark. It was quite a walk from the farm house...

I was probably about 4 when I remember tipping the pot and ended up with my feet in a puddle of pee....indoor plumbing was the greatest invention of man..