Many years ago my mother called me up and told me she had something for me. I drove 50 miles to her house and she handed me a brown paper bag that was kind of flat but heavy with a big smile on her face.
She probably found it in a craft store or through a friend. Can you figure out how it works? It really is quite clever the way it is made. The person designed it using a mouse trap. The sides have ridges which get caught by the springing trap when the quarter hits the <I>cheese</I>. There is a slot on top which says “Insert Quarter”. To be honest, I have gotten my fingers snapped a few times when setting the trap!
For some reason, the exploding outhouse ended up lost. When I began this tour, I started to look for it but could not find it any where. When it appeared to be lost, I figured my Mom still had it so I sent Email asking if she knew where it was. Much to my surprise, I received a reply from my sister saying she had it tucked away for a rainy day and the rest is history.
She sent it to me via snail mail and I took some digital photo’s with an AGFA ePhoto307 digital camera (before smart phones and digital SLR’s). I had to take quite a few to get the explosion at just the right time. I then used AGFA’s PhotoWise software to import the pictures, crop them and saved them as JPG files.
I opened the bag and found this exploding outhouse. Of course she included a quarter to try it out. I did and it exploded…every time! Follow along to see how it works…
Outhouse assembled and ready to go. Notice the coin slot in the roof.
Once you have it together, all you do is drop a quarter into the slot…AND…
BANG!!!
It makes quite a racket as the little outhouse explodes.
and then…
It’s over and ready to be put back together again!
Do you have a story using an outhouse or have a general comment?
“Dump” your answers to the official Outhouse Curator by using the form below…