Posted on 03/09/2009 12:00:30 PM PDT by Notoriously Conservative
Dear Cecil:
This is entirely on the level. It is also the kind of question only you can answer. What did people use before toilet paper was invented?
Cecil replies:
You should thank your lucky stars you live in the twentieth century, bucko. Let me tell you about ... corncobs. You may not believe this, but it was once common practice in rural America to leave a corncob hanging from a string in the outhouse for purposes of personal hygiene. The string, I gather, was to permit the cob to be reused. For those who were punctilious in these matters, or else blessed with an abundance of corncobs, a box of disposable cobs might be provided instead. In coastal regions, the cob might be replaced by a mussel shell.
For those who had access to it, paper from discarded books or newspapers was often preferred to either of the foregoing. The meteoric growth of the Sears Roebuck company, for instance, is thought to be partly attributable to the protean nature of its catalogs, which, historians tells us, might serve a family of regular habits for an entire season. As with the cob, the catalog would be hung in the outhouse on a string and pages torn off as needed. It is said the use of coated stock, which was nonabsorbent, was a source of great consternation to farm families when Sears began printing color pictures in the catalog earlier in this century.
English lords, in attempting to teach their sons to be cultivated gentlemen, often advised purchasing an inexpensive volume of verse for use in the loo. The idea, of course, was that while you were sitting there in a contemplative state you would be able to read a few stanzas, subsequent to which the paper could be put to other ends, so to speak. It has not escaped my notice that my magnum opus, The Straight Dope: A Compendium of Human Knowledge, is also well suited for this purpose. Indeed, in the next edition we are thinking about perforating the pages, for maximum convenience.
For more data on this fascinating topic, see An Irreverent and Almost Complete Social History of the Bathroom (1983), by Frank Muir.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/572/what-did-people-use-before-toilet-paper-was-invented
The meteoric growth of the Sears Roebuck company, for instance, is thought to be partly attributable to the protean nature of its catalogs, which, historians tells us, might serve a family of regular habits for an entire season.
Alas, the Sears Roebuck catalog no longer exists and most magazines and catalogs are "coated stock" these days. Can any Freepers suggest some particular more absorbent newspapers for our greenie friends?
So never shake hands with a Democrat.
And now I understand that “fist bump” thing!
Another reason and most likely at the top of the list.
There is no boathouse at Hereford!
This is as nuts as Cheryl Crowe’s “One Square” bs...
One Square PING!!!
No way am I letting the liberals try to turn that clock back on us.
Screw 'em.
naaa.. posted to death avot 2 weeks ago.
I make a point to waste toilet paper.
ROTFLMBO!!!!! That’s funny!
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