Knit to This
The Boghouse
My older child moved to Philadelphia after graduating from college. It’s a city I don’t know much about—by choice. I grew up in the other big city in Pennsylvania and there’s a whole sibling rivalry situation.
Philly may be older but Pittsburgh has moxie. Our Sheetz is superior to their Wawa. We also have more rivers and launched George Washington’s military career.
You’re welcome, by the way.
But after visiting said kid in Philly over the course of the past year, I have to admit the city is growing on me.
One of the reasons is The Boghouse, a podcast by Matt and Melissa Dunphy (married, not siblings), who bought an old magic theater near Center City in 2016. Their plan was to renovate the performance space and build an apartment above it. As you can imagine, given that they have an entertaining podcast about the whole undertaking, things get weird.
Once the Dunphys acquire the house and start construction—its own interesting story—they make a discovery after the footings have been dug for the planned addition: privy pits.
Yes. Privy pits are exactly what you think they are.
In the 18th century, in addition to what folks would normally put in a privy, they also used them as garbage pits and chucked in broken crockery, glassware, animal bones, and anything else hard to dispose of. Soon, the Dunphys are pulling redware and porcelain out of the holes—and a new obsession is born.
The Boghouse starts out as a predictable This Old House series before finding its true calling as a story about amateur archeology and material culture, with the occasional murder sprinkled in. The Dunphys have been my companions on drives to visit my older kid and, yes, while knitting.
The 27 episodes scratch the itches of any history nerd, especially those who are less interested in recitations of dates and battles and more taken with knowing how life was actually lived, both then and now.
(For those up for a field trip: the Museum of the American Revolution, which is just a few blocks away from the Dunphys’ place, has a display of the artifacts pulled from the privies the museum was built over. Among the debris was evidence of an unlicensed 18th century tavern run by a Quaker couple and a formerly enslaved woman. Historians were able to piece together a previously unknown story about the city because of what was thrown away. I mean, sure, the rest of the museum is pretty great—but, for me, the old trash was the main draw.)
Come Shop With Us
The Museum of the American Revolution is great! Its not your typical museum about a war focused on battles and guns. Its fairly new and very interactive. You learn about what happened to everyone else at the time – African-Americans, Native Americans, women, foreigners. I highly recommend it!
Oh my goodness!! History? Trash? Museums? I’m there! I’m going to forward this to my son, a history teacher, who will love this. I won’t be surprised if he and his wife wind up in Pennsylvania some day. She picks a state or specific city where they’ve never been and they go for a vacation and explore. They would love this!! Thanks for the heads up! Now I have to find the podcast. Yay!!
Im from Philly. What’s really funny to me is the whole Philly/Pittsburgh thing – it’s exactly what we Philly folks think— Pittsburgh is a whole other state, even though it’s in the *same* state, just a couple hundred miles away…add to that, the football team adversary, Eagles vs Steelers, and enough said. Can’t wait to listen. Thanks!
Thank you Adrienne! I’ve been looking for a listen as I hit the final 100 rows of my shawl project. This is perfect.
Thanks, Adrienne! Short road trip in a few hours. The listening part is now handled!
Wow—where’s my needles? I can’t wait to start.
Wawa rules! When I was a child it was an actual local dairy, the Wawa truck came a few times a week to drop off milk (not homogenized) in glass bottles on the front porch. Their dairy cows were a few miles from our house. So I’ve known them since they were a baby, as it were….
Agree! Wawa over Sheetz. And memories of visiting the dairy on school trips.
As a native of Western PA (south of Pittsburgh), I’m not surprised to hear that the most interesting part of Philly is its trash 😉
Yep. Philly. Where they boo their own sports teams and throw batteries at Santa Claus. Good one Mary Anne.
Adrienne, I trust you implicitly — but it’s Wawa over Sheetz, no question.
This would be worth investigating!
This PA rivalry thing…. in the middle we have – Sheetz now and a first Wawa just opened sort of close by. No rivalry- just needing to have good coffee and gas! … and lots of cows here, and cars, sheep, yarn……
Sounds like fun! We live in an old house and when I dig in the garden I find many interesting objects, lots of marbles for some reason. Kids playing?
When 3 of her three sons returned home from WWI to Iowa, they had indoor plumbing installed in their mother’s home. She refused to use it and used the privy outdoors because she felt that it was cleaner
Maybe that’s what living with three young men at once will do to you. 🙂
O my word, having just cleaned “the guy toilet” here, you know truth.
Adrienne, I love that you are a Pittsburgher!! Me too and it’s always hard that this wonderful place is considered the “lesser” of the PA cities. I moved to Falls Church last year after living in Pittsburgh all my life and I miss it every day.
This sounds fascinating! Thanks for the tip.
Perfect timing. Thanks! I’m about to drive from my home in Hilton Head South Carolina north to visit my 101 year old mother in Pittsburgh and then my daughters and grandchildren in Philadelphia before driving back to the south. Need something compelling to listen to for nearly 2,000 miles.
Pittsburgh is an unappreciated gem. I went once ten years ago to register voters (to no avail, sadly), loved it, and had one of the best meals of my life at a restaurant that was, I think, called Dish or Plate. Get the scallops.
If you like seeing “how life was actually lived” I recommend the A Bride’s Story series of manga, translated into English.
It’s a look at life in the 1800s along the Silk Roads in Central Asia, with a focus on women’s lives.
We see what daily life is like, how marriages are arranged, how children play, how community and friendships among women are made in sewing circles and in the bathhouses.
https://yenpress.com/series/a-bride-s-story
There are also action scenes when one clan attacks another and a horse race between potential brides and grooms.
Adrienne! You are on fire today! Just love this interesting slice of your life! I had a kid in Philly for a while and went to see him and fell in love with Philly. Since I have a different child in Binghamton, NY I will have to take a side trip to Pittsburgh to test the differences! And the responses to your article are funny and informative! What a treat for this Californian!
Fabulous! Thank you!
I am true history nerd who loves listening to podcasts while I knit. I have a daughter living in Pennsylvania who is a historic preservationist. I immediately clicked to listen to the Bog House! Very unfortunately, I was terribly disappointed by the constant profanity. I skipped quickly through the first episode hoping a later episode might be better. Alas, I cannot listen to that despite my love of history. I was very disappointed and left saddened by this all too common trend.
If you are interested, Baltimore has its own privy explorer and historian, Evan Woodard. Check him out on Instagram @salvagearc. I find his posts fascinating. There’s a lot you can learn from a privy.