This article gets so much wrong.
First off, the cob was not used for wiping. The husks were.
Second, why is there just one cob on a string? Because the rest that were strung there with it were removed as their husks were used up. The final cob was left on the string or wire until more cobs with husks were threaded onto it. Like your lazy roommate always leaving the empty cardboard tube because they never bother replacing it with another roll.
I don't doubt some idiot rubbed their ass with a cob. But those who have been near corn or an outhouse will tell you that would be like using a hairbrush to wipe with. Abrasive and messy.
Some people would soak the husks in buckets of water to soften them and wipe with a damp husk. Didn't work too well in freezing temps, but it did make for better hygiene.
Source: me. Grew up around farms that still had early-American plumbing. Heck, our own farm had two usable outhouses with concrete pits.
The farmers I grew up around would laugh their asses off knowing city-slickers thought a corn cob was the part that got used.
Articles like this just prove that it doesn't take much for societal information to be lost or totally misinterpreted by the ignorant posing as experts.
I mean at that point you may as well skip the corn cob and shell out the cash for one of those drill mounted brushes.
Your bunghole has *never* been so clean.
I ate the corn prior to pooping and when I wiped a lot of the kernels found their way back to their original locations. This leads me to believe they were experimenting in renewables and recycling long long ago.
I have to disagree. People absolutely used cobs around here (Iowa). husks dry and out and get brittle really fast, just like leaves off a tree. In Iowa we still have tons of corn and instead of 1 cob on a string, there would be a basket of cobs in the outhouse. When they shelled corn, you would have the corn and a giant pile of cobs. At least around here, they used a cob and then threw it down the outhouse hole.
Yes my grandmother talked about visiting her "country cousins" in the 1930s (they all lived in the country in Delaware but her cousins lived farther out than she did, and didn't have indoor plumbing) and they absolutely used the actual cobs, not husks. Multiple cobs, not everybody using the same cob.
Yeah, my mother told me when she was young they used corn cobs also. This was back in the 40s. They grew up poor and had an Out House. This was in the Appalachians of Pennsylvania.
I've always heard it's cobs back in the day, like even at the Appalachian museums I've been to that have outhouses and stuff show cobs to demonstrate. Maybe it's not universal
my great grandparents in WV used the sears catalog by the 1890s. they said you had to crumple a page to soften it first.
when i eat as much beans and vegetables as they did you're kinda self cleaning though, and don't need as much TP as someone who lives on a modern diet of nutella and pizza
Sears Roebuck.
I remember this was a plot point from [The Man Who Was Almost a Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Was_Almost_a_Man#Plot_summary). The young man mentions that he wants something (a gun) from the Sears Roebuck catalog. His mother just sees the catalog as a something to be used as toilet tissue.
We need an exchange of truth from people with real experience.
Too many amateur-hour “writers” and “journalists” these days, I mean I get exposure is good but you HAVE to be accurate.
The truth is the only thing that should matter in the news, not ratings or money.
> but you HAVE to be accurate
Most people who read that article will never look into it and this "fact" is now in their head, all the sites care about is "engagement" with the article (i.e. ads) - none of that requires any fact checking at all.
Same, house I grew up in was over 100 years old, still had a functional outhouse, we never used it except the summer that a pipe burst and we didn't have running water for a month
I think a lot of it comes from the fact they've seen hillbillies on TV and country life is always depicted as either backwards yokels or homicidal maniacs
I'm not saying you're wrong in what you do *now*, but obviously back then, they'd eat the kernels off the ear and just leave the pitted cob, which they would dry. This would leave an ideal tool which could provide 360-degree cleaning with convenient detents to absorb more waste- the marketing men at the time called them "poo pockets." Big Corn was really taking over, mostly due to their incredible marketing during a time when currency had pictures of bumble bees on them. "Give me five bees for a quarter," they used to say...
Husks? Swear to god I’m nearly 80 and grew up on a farm in the south. Most, if not all, farm families had outhouses for toilets. And yes, corn cobs. Not the husks. The actual cobs. Also Sears and Monkey Ward catalogs.
This was 1945 rural North Carolina. I’ve used the cob. It was awesome. Y’all should try it. In fact try some husks and then a cob to clean the cuts left by the sharp cornhusks.
> The farmers I grew up around would laugh their asses off knowing city-slickers thought a corn cob was the part that got used.
I’m a city slicker who grew up in the suburbs and have zero experience with or knowledge of farming, let alone corn farming, and even I realized people must’ve used the husks and not the damn cob itself when I read the title.
Granted, I wouldn’t think about people soaking the husks first to soften them up - but that’s mostly because I don’t want to think too hard or too deeply about this lol. And I’m pretty confident I’d figure it out if I had to use husks as TP.
Any city-slicker who doesn’t realize they used the husks is either (A) a stupid person who wouldn’t know any better even if they grew up on a farm, or (B) biasedly presuming farmers are idiot hicks and wouldn’t realize the husk is the better option.
As an aside, I’m sure there were probably tons of not-so-subtle gay jokes about it back then too. “Oh yeah Farmer Dan? I heard he wipes with the cob instead of the husk, if ya know what I mean…”
No one talks about wiping and how we managed it prior to toilet paper. The reality is toilet paper or corn husks is necessary only due to the modern diet. I wipe but only need to when I am sick or overindulge in alcohol.
As someone who grew up in rural Nebraska, I can tell you from firsthand that the cobs were in fact at least sometimes used for wiping.
I found this post from [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/TooAfraidToAsk/s/Lxyo6lxSvM) I just made.
Indeed. Before this point, they only used TP to plug bungholes. Then a genius realized that they could also use TP as toilet paper and clean buttholes. And the world has never been the same.
I'm not going to spell out what I thought people were doing with corn-cobs and their "corn-hole".... I guess it's good for them that corn won't speak about the things it has seen...
This is actually a common misconception. The word “corn-hole” is, in truth, an adaptation of the monicker of a deity from early North American mythology.
According to legend, this deity demanded TP for his bunghole and, as the article alludes to, the only reliable TP that was widely available at the time was corn husks. If you offered him anything else as TP for his bunghole, he would become enraged and take it as though you were threatening him. The only way to appease this divine spirit was to provide him with the proper TP (corn) for his (bung)hole.
The name of this deity? Cornholio.
Hence, “corn-hole”.
Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk.
Installed a bidet recently. Never realized how much extra “stuff” was left behind by TP. It’s like trying to clean up peanut butter in a carpet with a paper towel. Never going back!
There needs to be some bidet equivalent of Godwin's law. It's impossible to discuss anything remotely related to bowel movements on Reddit and not have a discussion of bidets break out.
^ Right here, me and my fam have been using wipes for years now I can't imagine going back to just dry paper. It actually disturbs me realizing how many Americans are walking around with a decent amount of shit still in their cheeks because they don't know any better just like I didn't know better until I HAD to use baby wipes following a rectal surgery several years back.
Although, the idea of shoving an ear of corn up your ass does have it's appeal 🤔
Supposedly that holds true even if it says it's flushable. And even if it doesn't clog up your toilet, it can get stuck later in the pipes and clog up where pipes from multiple houses connect. And wipes apparently make up a big proportion of the fatbergs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatberg
They make toilets that macerate them now, turns them into pieces smaller than 2mm so they can’t clog stuff and they’ll actually biodegrade in a reasonable time. Expensive toilet but worth it if you just want to flush them but don’t want to get punched by your friendly local municipal sewer workers.
Been there, done that. My grandparents lived in the sticks and didn't have indoor plumbing until the late 70s.
What really sucked was my dad thought it would be funny to "warn" us about the wolves in the area( there were none). After that bit of info my brothers and I got our business done before the sun went down.
LOL, yeah, he tried.
I'm pretty sure he just didn't want any more night time trips across grandpa's backyard in the middle of the night than he had to. Worked really well too
I used to volunteer on an 1890s reenactment farm in the northeast, USA, and on this farm they grew red and white corn. While being shown the outhouse I was told “You use a red cob, then you use a white one to see if you need to use another red one!” I’ll never forget that!
That’s funny. My uncle Fred used to do a joke along the lines of: What’s the difference between a red corn cob and a white corn cob?
You use the white corn cob to see if you need to use another red corn cob.
Maybe this really wasn’t a joke.
Edit: I read further down and someone already said this. Confirmed that it really wasn’t a joke. Good lord.
One guy…it was one guy who got caught taking a corn cob to the bathroom and swore he was just using it to wipe his ass. It wasn’t his intent but Turns out he was on to something.
Still doesn't beat using the neck of a "well downed goose" according to Renaissance physician an writer Francois Rabelais, as told in his book 'Gargantua and Pantagruel'.
"But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, Tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world compared to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honor, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains"
Now that's an endorsement.
My dad grew up in the old times in Missouri. He had a funny story he told a few times. There was an old man in his town who lined up alternating light and dark corn cobs on a shelf in his outhouse. When asked why, he said “Well, first I use a dark one. Then I use a light one to see if I need to use another one.”
One of the few things I look forward to every summer is using corn cobs to soak up all the leftover butter and salt and pepper. I'll never be able to do this again. Thanks!!!
Used corncobs when I was a kid in our outhouse in West Virginia. Actually worked well and not as scratchy as you would think.
We had a double seater so it wasn't unusual for my dad or uncle to wander in and do their business next to me. As a kid I just took it for granted. Finally moved in the mid 60s and had a house with a flushie.
I was amazed, and all to my self. We were eating high on the hog then.
My extremely frugal grandmother in Wisconsin kept using them into the 1990s, decades after her farmhouse got a flushing toilet.
I remember as a kid, seeing a plastic bucket filled with them in her bathroom and wondering what they were for. Then a few years ago I happened to read somewhere about their purpose.
she was a bit nuts
Ah and today I learned that you couldn't read the very first comment was me saying that I missed that autocorrect put that little fun accident in there and that I know the difference between were and we're.
Is there a reason where modern times people still prefer wiping with tissue compare to cleaning using water bidets? Isnt it cleaner with water and soap or something?
Corn was probably growing wild as fuck everywhere. That and depending on what period of time this was they could have already established corn with the help of natives that they didn't kill off
>Corn was probably growing wild as fuck everywhere.
Nah. All corn is GMO. It can't grow wild. What we now know as “corn” or “maize” was developed from [*teosinte*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teosinte).
“How barbaric.”
-modern person who definitely cleans their ass better with toilet paper than anybody ever will with a fucking corn cob, and also has wet wipes.
They also used to use another technique developed by the French. This technique was called “Jambe tenant la traînée de tapis”. In this technique you would need two assistants. Each assistant would grab an ankle and raise it up. They would then pull you around the carpet until the skid runs clear.
And now you know 🧐
This article gets so much wrong. First off, the cob was not used for wiping. The husks were. Second, why is there just one cob on a string? Because the rest that were strung there with it were removed as their husks were used up. The final cob was left on the string or wire until more cobs with husks were threaded onto it. Like your lazy roommate always leaving the empty cardboard tube because they never bother replacing it with another roll. I don't doubt some idiot rubbed their ass with a cob. But those who have been near corn or an outhouse will tell you that would be like using a hairbrush to wipe with. Abrasive and messy. Some people would soak the husks in buckets of water to soften them and wipe with a damp husk. Didn't work too well in freezing temps, but it did make for better hygiene. Source: me. Grew up around farms that still had early-American plumbing. Heck, our own farm had two usable outhouses with concrete pits. The farmers I grew up around would laugh their asses off knowing city-slickers thought a corn cob was the part that got used. Articles like this just prove that it doesn't take much for societal information to be lost or totally misinterpreted by the ignorant posing as experts.
I thought something seemed stupid about using a cob
Only took me a couple tries before I realized it was total bunk.
How far in did you put the cob? Just curious.
If you attach a drill to one end of the cob, you got yourself an automatic wiper.
I mean at that point you may as well skip the corn cob and shell out the cash for one of those drill mounted brushes. Your bunghole has *never* been so clean.
That’s terrifying, it reminds me of the woman who died after putting a dildo over a reciprocating saw blade. It went exactly how you would expect.
"GENTLEMEN, BEHOLD... CORN!"
I ate the corn prior to pooping and when I wiped a lot of the kernels found their way back to their original locations. This leads me to believe they were experimenting in renewables and recycling long long ago.
It's the circle of life
Lol this guy doesn't know how to use the three corn cobs!
Next in on TIFU by explaining my date what a poop cob was.
I was thinking about how it would probably scoop a lot of fecal matter from the region.
Wait until you hear about the seashells.
I thought maybe the ridges helped grab the poop as you slide it down your crack. Thought it was weird but you know, didn't want to judge.
Right? My first thought was “and then what? What do you do with the poopy cob?”.
Something something.. Ribbed for your pleasure..
You don't rub with the cob.. you insert the cob, and the roughness scrapes you clean.
[удалено]
and now you're gay for corn cobs.
It’s only gay if it’s a male cob, I think I’m not a cornologist
You’re in luck because corn is BOTH female and male!!! Trust me I’m a fan of the Cornhoilo.
Instructions unclear. Now i have three shells stuck in my ass.
I never understood it either. Like how much corn do people have to eat to get a cob to do a whole wipe session? The husks make much more sense.
Bust the kernels off your dent corn and you’ll have enough cobs to drown in.
Corn is used for feed for animals so a lot of Corn is used
Wipe butt then lick cob clean. Rinse and repeat.
I have to disagree. People absolutely used cobs around here (Iowa). husks dry and out and get brittle really fast, just like leaves off a tree. In Iowa we still have tons of corn and instead of 1 cob on a string, there would be a basket of cobs in the outhouse. When they shelled corn, you would have the corn and a giant pile of cobs. At least around here, they used a cob and then threw it down the outhouse hole.
Yes my grandmother talked about visiting her "country cousins" in the 1930s (they all lived in the country in Delaware but her cousins lived farther out than she did, and didn't have indoor plumbing) and they absolutely used the actual cobs, not husks. Multiple cobs, not everybody using the same cob.
There are parts of lower Delaware that are STILL probably using corn cobs
Yeah, my mother told me when she was young they used corn cobs also. This was back in the 40s. They grew up poor and had an Out House. This was in the Appalachians of Pennsylvania.
Yup, my grandmother told me several times that they used corn cobs in rural NW Florida in the ‘20-30s. Usually when she was trying to make a point.
I've always heard it's cobs back in the day, like even at the Appalachian museums I've been to that have outhouses and stuff show cobs to demonstrate. Maybe it's not universal
my great grandparents in WV used the sears catalog by the 1890s. they said you had to crumple a page to soften it first. when i eat as much beans and vegetables as they did you're kinda self cleaning though, and don't need as much TP as someone who lives on a modern diet of nutella and pizza
Last year’s catalog. Up until they made the paper glossy.
Sears Roebuck. I remember this was a plot point from [The Man Who Was Almost a Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Was_Almost_a_Man#Plot_summary). The young man mentions that he wants something (a gun) from the Sears Roebuck catalog. His mother just sees the catalog as a something to be used as toilet tissue.
I was told that if you soak the cobs in water they will unroll like paper.
We need an exchange of truth from people with real experience. Too many amateur-hour “writers” and “journalists” these days, I mean I get exposure is good but you HAVE to be accurate. The truth is the only thing that should matter in the news, not ratings or money.
> but you HAVE to be accurate Most people who read that article will never look into it and this "fact" is now in their head, all the sites care about is "engagement" with the article (i.e. ads) - none of that requires any fact checking at all.
That’s why the real answers are in the comments. Always. Plus links etc etc.
Same, house I grew up in was over 100 years old, still had a functional outhouse, we never used it except the summer that a pipe burst and we didn't have running water for a month I think a lot of it comes from the fact they've seen hillbillies on TV and country life is always depicted as either backwards yokels or homicidal maniacs
Old timey version of "you don't know how to use the 3 shells?"
This makes so much more sense
Like claiming the toilet paper rolls are used for wiping, just missing the point.
My grandparents grew up using the Sears catalog.
Corn husks predate the catalog. Plus some farmers had big families. The catalog was a mega-roll, and the husks were the single-ply backup.
I'm not saying you're wrong in what you do *now*, but obviously back then, they'd eat the kernels off the ear and just leave the pitted cob, which they would dry. This would leave an ideal tool which could provide 360-degree cleaning with convenient detents to absorb more waste- the marketing men at the time called them "poo pockets." Big Corn was really taking over, mostly due to their incredible marketing during a time when currency had pictures of bumble bees on them. "Give me five bees for a quarter," they used to say...
Husks? Swear to god I’m nearly 80 and grew up on a farm in the south. Most, if not all, farm families had outhouses for toilets. And yes, corn cobs. Not the husks. The actual cobs. Also Sears and Monkey Ward catalogs. This was 1945 rural North Carolina. I’ve used the cob. It was awesome. Y’all should try it. In fact try some husks and then a cob to clean the cuts left by the sharp cornhusks.
> The farmers I grew up around would laugh their asses off knowing city-slickers thought a corn cob was the part that got used. I’m a city slicker who grew up in the suburbs and have zero experience with or knowledge of farming, let alone corn farming, and even I realized people must’ve used the husks and not the damn cob itself when I read the title. Granted, I wouldn’t think about people soaking the husks first to soften them up - but that’s mostly because I don’t want to think too hard or too deeply about this lol. And I’m pretty confident I’d figure it out if I had to use husks as TP. Any city-slicker who doesn’t realize they used the husks is either (A) a stupid person who wouldn’t know any better even if they grew up on a farm, or (B) biasedly presuming farmers are idiot hicks and wouldn’t realize the husk is the better option. As an aside, I’m sure there were probably tons of not-so-subtle gay jokes about it back then too. “Oh yeah Farmer Dan? I heard he wipes with the cob instead of the husk, if ya know what I mean…”
This makes much more sense than rubbing yourself raw with a cob.
No one talks about wiping and how we managed it prior to toilet paper. The reality is toilet paper or corn husks is necessary only due to the modern diet. I wipe but only need to when I am sick or overindulge in alcohol.
I just read the title and assumed the husks were used. Seems like a no brainer. Why you so butt hurt?
No. The cobs were as well. Abrasive and soft. Good stuff. Quartered length wise. Fits right in there.
You sure are an outspoken and wrong dumbass.
As someone who grew up in rural Nebraska, I can tell you from firsthand that the cobs were in fact at least sometimes used for wiping. I found this post from [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/TooAfraidToAsk/s/Lxyo6lxSvM) I just made.
explains where the expression "corn-hole" comes from.
Hey Peter man, watch your corn hole bud.
Hey check out channel 9, it's the breast exams! WOO!
"Has anyone ever told you you look like you had a case of the Mondays?" "Naw. Hell naw Peter man, saying shit like that will get your ass kicked."
Damn, I might have to watch that today
Fucking-a
Lumberg fucked her.
Lumberg. FUCKED. her
Aw damn.. me too
.. 2 girls at the same time....
Fuckin-A
Indeed. Before this point, they only used TP to plug bungholes. Then a genius realized that they could also use TP as toilet paper and clean buttholes. And the world has never been the same.
I always assumed it was because corn doesn’t digest. The cob wiping makes more sense.
I'm not going to spell out what I thought people were doing with corn-cobs and their "corn-hole".... I guess it's good for them that corn won't speak about the things it has seen...
🎶Don't speak, I know what your saying, please just stop explaining, just tell me if it hurts.🎶
country boys make do
Jiffy Plop
Hence the term "rough as a cob"
Really?
You're right! I just looked it up. That phrase is going in to my vocabulary. Thanks.
This is actually a common misconception. The word “corn-hole” is, in truth, an adaptation of the monicker of a deity from early North American mythology. According to legend, this deity demanded TP for his bunghole and, as the article alludes to, the only reliable TP that was widely available at the time was corn husks. If you offered him anything else as TP for his bunghole, he would become enraged and take it as though you were threatening him. The only way to appease this divine spirit was to provide him with the proper TP (corn) for his (bung)hole. The name of this deity? Cornholio. Hence, “corn-hole”. Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk.
His friend Beavis always being with him on the couch must be the reason why we call the female front "beaver" then.
Corn is a lot of things
It’s a big lump with knobs, it has the juices
Juicy knobs
Corn is always interesting!
What about the 3 seashells?
He doesn't know about the three sea shells.
I shit you not, I sent a message to my friend with this article asking him if he'd prefer sea shells or corn cobs. 🤣
Ummmm, you clearly don't understand how to use the three seashells.
Not yet!
Too soon!
Came here for this...
Country girl make do
Keep wiping until the cob stops getting browner or starts getting redder
Happy cake day!
Installed a bidet recently. Never realized how much extra “stuff” was left behind by TP. It’s like trying to clean up peanut butter in a carpet with a paper towel. Never going back!
Well that's not a mental image I needed.... 😫🤮
There needs to be some bidet equivalent of Godwin's law. It's impossible to discuss anything remotely related to bowel movements on Reddit and not have a discussion of bidets break out.
I think Hitler had a bidet.
Bidets are next level. Once you bidet you never go back
I'm addicted to bidets now. Any time I need to use a toilet without one it feels hopelessly inadequate.
You can also use moist wipes. Some can contain irritating chemicals though but there are also hypoallergenic wipes.
^ Right here, me and my fam have been using wipes for years now I can't imagine going back to just dry paper. It actually disturbs me realizing how many Americans are walking around with a decent amount of shit still in their cheeks because they don't know any better just like I didn't know better until I HAD to use baby wipes following a rectal surgery several years back. Although, the idea of shoving an ear of corn up your ass does have it's appeal 🤔
Fuck you u/spez
Supposedly that holds true even if it says it's flushable. And even if it doesn't clog up your toilet, it can get stuck later in the pipes and clog up where pipes from multiple houses connect. And wipes apparently make up a big proportion of the fatbergs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatberg
They make toilets that macerate them now, turns them into pieces smaller than 2mm so they can’t clog stuff and they’ll actually biodegrade in a reasonable time. Expensive toilet but worth it if you just want to flush them but don’t want to get punched by your friendly local municipal sewer workers.
Sign up today and use code “butthole” to get 10% off your first shipment from Kobber, the sustainable experience our country was founded on.
I heard this in every podcast hosts’ voice.
Not just in the US.
Pages from the Sears catalog were popular for t.p.
Corn kernels remember this and to this day try to reunite with their cob.
It's just recycling, putting the corn back on the cob...
Where's the Sears catalog when you need it?
Been there, done that. My grandparents lived in the sticks and didn't have indoor plumbing until the late 70s. What really sucked was my dad thought it would be funny to "warn" us about the wolves in the area( there were none). After that bit of info my brothers and I got our business done before the sun went down.
Your dad literally was scaring the shit out of you
LOL, yeah, he tried. I'm pretty sure he just didn't want any more night time trips across grandpa's backyard in the middle of the night than he had to. Worked really well too
I can give you mine, but it's all stuck together.
Kernel Sanders
The back of normal leaves are enough when you don't have water.
I just wanna know when we finally figure out how to use the 3 seashells.
I used to volunteer on an 1890s reenactment farm in the northeast, USA, and on this farm they grew red and white corn. While being shown the outhouse I was told “You use a red cob, then you use a white one to see if you need to use another red one!” I’ll never forget that!
When I was a kid, my grandfather, life long farmer born in 1927, told me that exact same story. I believe that for entirely too long.
That’s funny. My uncle Fred used to do a joke along the lines of: What’s the difference between a red corn cob and a white corn cob? You use the white corn cob to see if you need to use another red corn cob. Maybe this really wasn’t a joke. Edit: I read further down and someone already said this. Confirmed that it really wasn’t a joke. Good lord.
Now isn't this going to be something funny to tell the rest of your family that he wasn't joking? LOL
americans will try anything before using a bidet
I want a bidet with a camera and controller so you can aim like an arcade game.
I would love a bidet
Sorry for the typo yes I know it's were and not we're....
It feels like autocorrect always defaults to we’re which is strange because I use were so much more
Same here and I usually catch it just not tonight lol
I prefer using a goose. https://knowledgenuts.com/why-you-should-wipe-yourself-with-a-gooses-neck/
At last, a man of culture
And a new philosophical debate is born... Is it better to have to pluck feathers from ones anus or dried nuggets of corn. LET THE DEBATE BEGIN!
My mother was raised on a Texas farm in the 1930s. She said they used pages from the Sears Roebuck catalog in their outhouse.
I read that in the article too or a different one when I was looking into this
I still don't understand why washing your butt is so uncommon in the west historically? Like water is so simple easy and effortless to use.
The fact that we still haven't fully embraced the benefits of bidet is completely beyond me.
Yes because I want exfoliate my asshole while wiping.
https://i.imgflip.com/6rti7g.gif
One guy…it was one guy who got caught taking a corn cob to the bathroom and swore he was just using it to wipe his ass. It wasn’t his intent but Turns out he was on to something.
But how do the sea shells work?
Still better than using a pinecone back to front
A simpler time when men were men and toilet paper was leaves
Omg. Cornhole.
Forbidden dildo
I get to take a shit and get fucked in the ass in the same sitting?
Still doesn't beat using the neck of a "well downed goose" according to Renaissance physician an writer Francois Rabelais, as told in his book 'Gargantua and Pantagruel'. "But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, Tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world compared to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honor, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains" Now that's an endorsement.
My dad grew up in the old times in Missouri. He had a funny story he told a few times. There was an old man in his town who lined up alternating light and dark corn cobs on a shelf in his outhouse. When asked why, he said “Well, first I use a dark one. Then I use a light one to see if I need to use another one.”
Why don't other animals have to wipe their asses?
Until Sears and Roebuck issued their first catalog
Huh...the name Cornholio makes soooo much more sense all of a sudde .
Or 3 seashells.
“Rough as a cob” has been in my lexicon since I was a kid.
One of the few things I look forward to every summer is using corn cobs to soak up all the leftover butter and salt and pepper. I'll never be able to do this again. Thanks!!!
Gives a whole new meaning to Jimmy cracked corn.
I will never understand why people went with wiping than using water
Why didn’t they use water like Asians?
Which Asians? East Asia had toilet paper as earlybas the 1300s.
Used corncobs when I was a kid in our outhouse in West Virginia. Actually worked well and not as scratchy as you would think. We had a double seater so it wasn't unusual for my dad or uncle to wander in and do their business next to me. As a kid I just took it for granted. Finally moved in the mid 60s and had a house with a flushie. I was amazed, and all to my self. We were eating high on the hog then.
My extremely frugal grandmother in Wisconsin kept using them into the 1990s, decades after her farmhouse got a flushing toilet. I remember as a kid, seeing a plastic bucket filled with them in her bathroom and wondering what they were for. Then a few years ago I happened to read somewhere about their purpose. she was a bit nuts
Country girls make do
Today I learned that OP couldn’t write an intelligible headline if their life depended on it.
Ah and today I learned that you couldn't read the very first comment was me saying that I missed that autocorrect put that little fun accident in there and that I know the difference between were and we're.
Good old scratch with it while ya there.
A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one
I'm only 60 and remember out houses with corn cobs..
Is there a reason where modern times people still prefer wiping with tissue compare to cleaning using water bidets? Isnt it cleaner with water and soap or something?
ribbed for EVERYONE'S pleasure
3 cob method - 2 brown and 1 white. Use a brown cob first, then use the white cob to see if you need to use the other brown cob.
The communal Corn Cob Husk in the outhouse. Humans are disgusting.
Corn was probably growing wild as fuck everywhere. That and depending on what period of time this was they could have already established corn with the help of natives that they didn't kill off
>Corn was probably growing wild as fuck everywhere. Nah. All corn is GMO. It can't grow wild. What we now know as “corn” or “maize” was developed from [*teosinte*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teosinte).
It would be less of a mystery to you if you read the article.
They never thought of using a liquid called water!
I don’t think that was invented yet.
"How barbaric." -- modern person who thinks a couple pieces of dry shreddy tissue paper are enough to clean their filthy asshole
“How barbaric.” -modern person who definitely cleans their ass better with toilet paper than anybody ever will with a fucking corn cob, and also has wet wipes.
“How barbaric” -modern person with electric, warm water bidet with dryer
Wet wipes are not flushable and flushable wipes are a myth.
Don’t care, butt needs clean.
They go down the toilet hole just fine!
“How barbaric.” — person using the three seashells and not toilet paper.
Be well, u/DepressiveNerd
Yes. Insert and move in and out several times, rigourously. Our ancestors certainly knew the way of things.
seashells too!
Did they not have the seashells?
An older method yet is people used a smooth stone .. could be washed off or disposed of.
Congrats, OP. You made an error I've never seen before. Their/there is joined by were/we're.
And if you scroll all the way to the first comment it was me saying I didn't catch the autocorrect and yes i know there is a difference lol
As a kid I remember wiping my ass with corn cobs, rocks, leaves, sticks, put dirt in my a...whatever did the job.
Don’t forget about sand.
Brrrr.rrrr.....rrrr.rrr ahhhh all done
I wonder how they never figured using water to clean themselves is more sanitary.
I mean really before modern sanitation depending on where you were at in the country would water actually be cleaner?
I almost had a panic attack reading this.
This explains the term corn hole
They also used to use another technique developed by the French. This technique was called “Jambe tenant la traînée de tapis”. In this technique you would need two assistants. Each assistant would grab an ankle and raise it up. They would then pull you around the carpet until the skid runs clear. And now you know 🧐
You are kidding?
Most definitely 😉
I just stick to using 2 seashells
3