Honey Buckets

When I was growing up in Washington state, a company called Honey Bucket held a dominant position in the local portable toilet market. Their toilets are still a common sight in the American West.

Honey Bucket brand portable toilet. Photo by donielle. (CC BY-SA)

They were so widespread when I was a child that I didn’t know that “Honey Bucket” was the name of a company at all until I moved to Massachusetts for college. I thought “honey bucket” was just the generic term for toilets that could be moved from place-to-place!

So for the first five years that I lived in Massachusetts, I continued to call all portable toilets “honey buckets.”

Until somebody asked me why I called them that—five years after moving!—all my friends in Massachusetts thought that “honey bucket” was just a personal, idiosyncratic, and somewhat gross, euphemism.

7 Replies to “Honey Buckets”

  1. In Germany they are commonly named after their manufacturer (Dixi/Toitoi), which were also just prominently readable on the toilets. So same thing there, except everyone uses the same word. I suppose the US is just too large for this to work. :)

Leave a Reply to lamby Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *