I lived for a couple years in a turn of the century farmhouse in the
foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains west of Charlottesville, Va. The
house was a claboarded 1-story job with no blaster and a single potbelly
woodstove for heat. The bathroom plumbing consisted of ceramic drain
pipe that ran from the toilet, which was inside up against a back wall,
to a spot about 30-40 yards away where the yard dropped off in a gentle
slope. The pipe was buried about 1' underground and surfaced at the edge
of that little hill. There grew the most intense stand of volunteer
tomatoes and cucumber vines... Roots invaded the pipe every summer and I
had to dig it up and clean them out to get everything flowing again.
 
Water came from a box cistern placed up the mountain slope nearly 1/4
mile from the house. This was a hole in the ground with boards and
screening laid loosely over it. From midway down the low side there ran
an iron pipe to take water to the house. That pipe didn't clog up, but
the cistern itself had to have leaf mold and other junk raked out of it
periodically.
 
Ah, the joys of "modern" plumbing.
 
Dan Mouer