The preponderance of a four-letter word makes this little meditation about change a shade on the scandalous side, but it's just too good. It's the work of my friend, Jim Heynen, a Siouxlander, who here catches the same theme that was pushing me around yesterday with the new keyboard. It's always been (blush!) a favorite of mine.
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When times got good, everybody got indoor toilets. Most people kept the outdoor privy too for when the weather was nice or for when their feet were too muddy to cme in the house. You had to be a pretty bad farmer not to be able to afford an indoor toilet.
Except one rich farmer. He didn't want an indoor toilet
When other farmers asked him why he didn't have one, he told them things like this.
Houses are places where you go to have good times with your family. To eat. To sleep. To play with your children. To make children. Now you people with your indoor toilets, what have you done to your houses? You put a place for people to shit in them and call it improvement! Think of this--somebody says, I have to go to the toilet, and instead of going outside they just go into the next room. Now how are the rest of you supposed to feel when you know that person is right on the other side of that door--only a few feet away--shitting! At least people with chamber pots could hide them behind the bed. But your indoor toilet is always there. Pretty soon your kitchen smells like shit. And you call that modern! You call that civilized! A houses is almost a holy place. Now you tell me what kind of person would build a room for shitting in a place like that! Not even a dog shits in his own house.
Nobody could argue with him really. They just tried not to talk about toilets with him. Because when they did they couldn't help feeling a little bit foolish for what they had done too themselves and their homes.
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"Who Didn't Want an Indoor Toilet" is from You know What Is Right (North Point Press, 1988). It's not printed with permission. I expect a law suit sometime next week.
1 comment:
I doubt he lived in Alberta, Canada where temps have been known to dip to -40... I bet his wife had to potty train the little ones and empty all the successful attempts. I bet he didn't assist the small child in the early dark afternoons to the privy out back while hearing coyotes howling in the fields. I suspect he sat near the fire reading a book, toasty warm with his hot chocolate and full tummy and someone else tended the things under the bed.
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