When I was a kid in Indianapolis in the '50s we had one small bathroom. When I first started spending summers on a farm with my aunt and uncle in southern Indiana, we had an outhouse. Later, a bathroom was fashioned from a small bedroom - and I can assure you this was a very big deal. Occasionally I stayed with another aunt and uncle and their children in Louisville, Kentucky. They lived in what is sometimes called a duplex but we called a double. That's because the two units were mirror images, except in the very back was one bathroom. Both families shared this bathroom. (It was important to remember to lock both doors.)
When Dave was growing up in Independence, Kansas he lived with his aunt who was a high school teacher, his grandmother and a boarder. They all shared one bathroom.
When my four kids were growing up and we lived mostly in parsonages we mostly had two bathrooms although in the later years the parsonages kept getting bigger and fancier - with more bathrooms which, by that time, we didn't need. (But that's another story.)
All of the above was pretty much the norm for middle class America at the time.
Last night, while playing cribbage, I suggested that we each try to count the number of bathrooms our kids have. I know that three of my children (that's three homes) have a combination of 14 bathrooms. That doesn't count the bathrooms in my son's second home. But that is a work in progress so the count isn't in. My other daughter currently lives in a very small space and has one bathroom. But in her day she had her share of many-bathroomed homes.
Dave tried to count the total number of bathrooms in the two homes of his two children but he wasn't sure. It's somewhere between 7 and 8.
If you've ever read a history of bathrooms you understand that this is a remarkably good time in which to live, bathroom-wise. I'm just so thankful to finally have my very own.
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