Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
On this date …
1951: The city of Portales was working on the “Ouster of outhouses,” according to The Portales Tribune.
Jerry Hein, the city’s sanitarian, was making a list of all the outhouses in the city limits in hopes of having them removed.
“A person would expect a lot of these instances of unsanitary toilet facilities to be hardship cases, but it just isn’t that way,” Hein said.
“Most of the cases will deal with people who own low-rent houses and just don’t want to put the plumbing in.”
The city’s plan was to “accept bids from plumbing companies to either build privies or modernize these houses,” the newspaper reported. “The low bid would be accepted and the cost of the plumbing would be assessed against the houses in question.”
Once the list was completed and bids accepted, the “city dads” would provide the information to the city attorney for “proper handling,” the paper reported.
Pages Past is compiled by David Stevens. Contact:
