1918: shoves landlord through wall for his refusal to install indoor plumbing

2024: “indoor plumbing is an unreasonable request”

Yeah, the best of these comics are an amusingly excessive reaction to a relatable annoyance. I find this reaction amusing in a slapstick kind of way, but the annoyance somewhat unrelatable: is it really that big a deal not to have an outdoor faucet? What if the landlord legitimately can’t afford it? (maybe he has bills because of family illness or something.)

I think Everett’s saying that he has to run a hose from indoors every time he needs water outdoors. An outdoor faucet might be a luxury these days (and I’m no fan of modern lawns), but back when more people had horses and even small livestock like chickens, and when people were growing victory gardens for the Great War, an outdoor faucet seems like less of a luxury. Also, to people reading in 1918, I think the landlord’s reaction is supposed to stand in for all the things that unscrupulous landlords did before city codes and inspections started being put in place - note that the landlord seems well-dressed and at-ease, so I think readers back then would see him as a stock character. So another thing I like about these comics is that they force me to try to think of what life was like back in those days.

Nobody relates, eh? We have a hose tap on the front of our place, but none in the back and we are in a row house that isn’t on the end so it’s not like we can just run it around the side. We 100% relate to True in this one. In fact, I think I’ll send this to our landlord.