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Outhouses were very common in Saratoga many years ago

By Willys Peck

What with a considerable amount of new construction going on in the area, there have been more and more porta-potties in evidence, obviously for the convenience of building crews. Which is fine; when you want one, you want it bad, as the saying goes.

But I can't help thinking, with my sights perpetually set on the past, wouldn't it be interesting to have these facilities constructed in the form of old-fashioned privies, better known as outhouses? Incidentally, I've never looked at the label on one, but I'm sure these modern facilities have a more professional-sounding name than "porta-potty."

Owners of today's luxury homes wouldn't like to think about it, but outhouses were once pretty common in Saratoga. I remember in my early childhood, when we lived on Marion Avenue (did somebody say "Road"?), our house was the only one of the three at the end of that street that had inside plumbing. At one of those houses, a small cottage, people had to walk over a little bridge to get to the outhouse on the other side of the creek.

The most architecturally pleasing outhouse I can remember was one that rancher Walter Worden had moved to a spot adjoining his dry yard, about where the Saratoga High School athletic field is today. This would have been in 1937, and it was for the benefit of the apricot-cutters working there. As a recent grammar school graduate, I was cutting 'cots along with other youngsters and several housewives. As I remember it, the outhouse was quite large, a two-holer, with ornamental trim around the roof. I think it's too bad that at least one of these structures hasn't been preserved as a relic.

In recent years, outhouse locations are much sought after by bottle collectors. That's because in the old days, before recycling was in vogue, the easiest way to get rid of something like a bottle was just to toss it through the privy seat. Lots of room down there.

Well, now that I've worked my way into the sewer, I might as well languish there and rub a few people the wrong way by telling of the sewer farm that became a school. I'm referring to Redwood Middle School, formerly Fruitvale School, formerly Saratoga sewer farm. Saratoga of old, basically a land of cesspools and septic tanks, actually had a sanitary district, which encompassed little more than the Village area.

The district had an outfall line that ran down Saratoga Avenue, then angled off near Douglass Lane and ran through some orchards to a site off Fruitvale Avenue. There the district constructed a large, two-compartment septic tank, which drained into cesspools around the perimeter. In theory, it sounded fine, but it didn't take long for these facilities to become hopelessly overloaded. That's when the district found an obliging rancher, who let the district release effluent through a wooden flume into his orchard. Then, when the owner wanted to sell the property in 1941, the sanitary district leased 19 acres around the septic tank and went into the fruit-growing business, irrigating the orchard with you-know-what. A series of good crops enabled the district to exercise its option to buy and pay off the purchase price in 1948.

It was about this time that the reason for maintaining a sewer farm dissolved with the passage of a pair of bond issues, one by Sanitation District 4, which included Saratoga, to construct a trunk sewer line to San Jose's sewer outfall, which then emptied into San Francisco Bay. The second bond issue, passed by San Jose, was for the construction of a sewage treatment plant to serve the northern part of Santa Clara Valley.

The now-needless sewer farm just happened to be what the Saratoga Union School District was looking for as the location for its second school, and the sale was accomplished. It happened that this was at the time I was covering the West Valley for the San Jose Mercury--now Mercury News--and the school-sewer farm deal was good copy. In the interest of journalistic accuracy, I referred to the property as the sewer farm in my stories, because that's what it was. This didn't sit well with the school people, not to mention a good many parents, and I got quite a bit of flak.

There probably are a lot of people today who aren't too happy to see this reference in print. At least, though, I'm not pushing for a sewer farm plaque on the property. But then again, why not?