Lusk Memories, Bob Vollmer Part 2, by Doris Johnson

Bob Vollmer shares Halloween memories about Lusk

Bob Vollmer has some Halloween memories to share with us. He says that back when the city put in new sewer lines, everyone, of course, still had an outhouse. "The city kept trying for years to get the residents to get rid of their little buildings out back, but folks kept hanging onto their little houses and just wouldn't do it."

Bob said, "At that time there were two gangs of kids in town, the West Side gang and the East Side gang. During Halloween the kids dragged as many things as they could onto Main Street. Bob went on to say, "one of the favorite things to do was drag the old horse-drawn water sprinkler tank down to Main Street. One of the yearly events on Halloween that we would do was to randomly select outhouses from back yards and haul them to Main Street, then they would be retrieved early the next morning by the owners," Bob explained.

"One Halloween we were busy moving outhouses when a couple of men came up to us and said, 'why don't you get this one from so and so's house'. There were other men that approached the other gang and did the same thing. They approached us again and again. Both gangs worked all night moving outhouses to Main Street. At two in the morning, the gangs finally called it a night. We had them all; there were privies from the railroad tracks all the way down on Main Street, which at that time would have been up to the Ranger Building, which was not finished," he said.

"The next morning folks got up early as they used to back then and went to Main Street to retrieve their little houses, but there were none. Main Street was bare. They looked at the dump and searched high and low, but none were found. The Mayor said he didn't know anything about it and the City Marshall also said he knew nothing about it. To this day no one knows what happened to the outhouses. Later my dad told me he thought they had it all planned out ahead of time. The gangs were part of some grand plan and didn't even know it. And it was the best kept secret in town because no one seems to know what happened to all of those outhouses," Bob said.

Thanks Bob, we appreciate you and your memories. Until next time keep your smile sincere and your backside warm.

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