Outermost Convenience

Calendar Highlights Disappearing North Beach Outhouses

by Tim Wood

            To most people, outhouses are quaint vestiges of an earlier time when plumbing was not as ubiquitous as it is today.  Few people, in fact, have ever seen — let alone used — a working outhouse on Cape Cod.  Unless they are a denizen of North Beach.

            Until town health boards began requiring modern incinerating toilets, each of the camps on the outer beach had their own outhouse.  Some, like the camps themselves, were distinctive despite — or perhaps because of — their rustic construction. Some still exist, although most no longer retain their original function (a few do, however).  Some were lost along with the camps that were either removed or destroyed by erosion over the past several months. 

Don Gould with his new calendar, in an appropriate setting.  SETH GOULD PHOTO

           To Don Gould, however, North Beach outhouses are more than just conveniences.  He sees art in them, in their construction, their weathered wood, their relation to the land on which they sit.  A longtime photographer, he’s captured many of the outhouses through his lens over the years, and recently published a 2009 calendar featuring the best shots, titled “Outermost Outhouses.”

            “I had the idea for a long time,” Gould said last week, standing in the office of Chatham Mobil, where he is a co-owner.  “This past year it felt most appropriate, given all that’s going on.”

            Five of the outhouses featured in the 13-month calendar are now gone, Gould said.  The others are from the South Village on North Beach Island — where his family owns a camp — and a couple from the camps tucked in a corner of the beach in Orleans.

            “My centerfold outhouse is gone,” Gould lamented, as is the outhouse with the most descriptive quarterboard — “Poop Tent.”  That one was covered with sand shortly after the new inlet opened up in April 2007.  He then went out to the beach and shot the photo included in the calendar of the structure surrounded by mounds of ocean-sculpted sand.

            Those that remain are mostly put to other uses these days.

            “Ours holds the deck chairs,” Gould said of the outhouse at his family’s camp.  All of the outhouses are different, and most are older, although a few have been “upgraded” with new materials.  “I tried to stick with the old ones, mostly,” he said.

            Gould has been going to North Beach “since before I could walk.” His parents would take the family to the outer beach on weekends in an old woody station wagon.  Consequently, “an outhouse was nothing new to me.”  As subjects, outhouses combine several of his photographic interests — the texture of old wood, structures, the shore and the ocean.

            “I’m pretty drawn to the water,” he said, especially the outer beach.  “I never tire of taking pictures out there.”

            Gould has been taking photographs since his wife, Sally, got him into the hobby in the 1970s.

            “I had a Polaroid, and figured that was all I’d ever need,” he said.  Sally gave him an old Canon 35mm that “weighed about 50 pounds,” and he never looked back.  He liked to take photos in the early morning.  He’s at work at 4:30 a.m., and usually goes out for a run about 5, and shoots after that.

            Last year, Monomoy Salvage and Mark August began carrying notecards featuring his photos, and he sold about 700 over the summer. He also had a brush with fame when, about a year ago, he went up to the roof of Logan Airport when his flight was delayed, and captured the only photo of a plane touching down without its landing gear.  A friend got the photo on the Boston Fox Network station and from there it was picked up by the national wires.

            “It was my 15 minutes of fame,” Gould joked.

            It was only recently that Gould made the shift from film to digital photography.  Now he uses as Nikon D80 10-megapixel SLR, usually with an 18 to 200mm lens.  Although digital photography is freeing, in the sense that there’s no concern about the cost of film or developing, there’s always the temptation to “improve” photos using the computer.  Gould let’s the original photos speak for themselves.

            “I don’t even know how to use Photoshop,” he said.  Half of the outhouse photos are digital, he added.

            Shepherding the calendar project from start to finish has been a learning experience, Gould said.  He asked folks in local shops for advice, and had help from graphic designer Garry Gates, whom Gould credits with the calendar’s title.  “I never would have gotten it done without him,” he said.

            Gould doesn’t expect to do another outhouse calendar, at least not of outer beach outhouses.  As word of the calendar spread, people have dropped off their own outhouse photos, and someone even left a small model outhouse for him.  Many of those who have bought the calendar say they have the perfect spot for it, he added: in the bathroom.

            “Outermost Outhouses” is available for $10 at Chatham Mobil, Yellow Umbrella Books, The Mayflower Shop, Monomoy Salvage, Chatham Coffee and Booksmith in Orleans.  He will also sign copies of the calendar at Yellow Umbrella Books on Sunday, July 6 from noon to 2 p.m. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the calendar will be donated to the Women of Fishing Families.