The Cracker farmers in south Alabama and the Panhandle of Florida in the early 1800’s would use corn cobs.
Since the corn had to be boiled for the cob to be soft you had to eat at least enough to keep your ass wiped. Per bowel movement you wanted at least 3 cobs, two red, one white. You used the first red one then the white one to determine if you needed to use the second white one.
Waste not.
Then when the Sears Roebuck catalogs came out, decades before toilet paper everyone wanted one even though everyone was too poor to order anything.
The catalogs were used even after TP was available until Sears started sending out color catalogs which proved too slick for their previous use.
People at the time, men in particular were embarrassed that they used toilet paper the way many rural men in the twentieth century felt embarrassed if they were confronted with a bidet.
I told you all that I’m really old right?
For three years I lived with a grandfather that was born in 1875 and a grandmother who gave birth to my dad in 1929, her fourth child. I had nothing to do but hear their stories, it’s like having life experiences going back almost a century and a half.
From post civil war reconstruction to helicopters on Mars.
What a life.