The can in the can

Porta potty humor is not my #1 subject, but it's definitely #2.

Concerns over the spread of the Coronavirus have led a lot of parks to close their restrooms. In their place, one, two, or a whole line of porta potties have appeared.

Quite frankly, these portable toilets are a subject on (or in) which I do not wish to dwell. Given a choice of where to go when outdoors, I would prefer to use a "lava-tree." However, I was told that if one is caught urinating in public here in Minnesota, one should expect to add "sex offender" to his credentials. So no matter how disgusting the toilet, even a pit toilet in which monsters may lurk, I step in, lock the door, and do my duty. But not happily.

And the grumpy old man in me gets even grumpier when I see a pop can, beer bottle, or other piece of trash lodged in the bowels of a potty's holding tank. (If you are a guy, it's impossible not to look down there - both aiming and checking for the Creature from the Black Lagoon.) Whoever commits this malevolent act of depositing a foreign object in the pit has obviously never had a job that involved fecal matter. 

I have a long history of dealing with poop. As a farm kid, I was given the task of cleaning the farrowing house and other hog pens of manure. (I remember a teacher in junior high having me leave my shoes in the hallway since I'd forgotten to change them before coming to school.) In high school, my Saturdays involved emptying the liquid hog manure from an underground storage pit with the "honey wagon" - a wagon with a suction pump that pulled the "honey" into a large tank. I would then drive to a field and reverse the pump, allowing the contents to be spread. As I tell my children, I learned two things from this job: 1) always check to see which way the wind is blowing, 2) never lick your finger to do so. Even as an adult, as I drive through farmland I recognize the smell of freshly spread manure. "Ah, the smell of money," as my dad used to say.

I also had the pleasure to work in a large commercial laundry as a college undergraduate. The laundry served a chain of nursing homes along Colorado's Front Range. I would either drive a van to institutions in Boulder, Longmont, Loveland etc. and pick up large fragrant carts that included adult diapers along with sheets and towels; or I would spend the evenings unloading the laundry into very large washing machines and drying the contents once washed. My co-workers were mostly Latinx and happily I was treated as one of the Gallegos brothers. Their mom would bring me tamales too. The job paid the bills.

When working as surveyor's helper one summer, I had the rare experience to help measure the depth of a cattle feedlot manure pond. It involved a small row boat and a "rod" - a very large measuring device similar to a yardstick. I was at the oars, the surveyor stood a thwart, pushing the rod down to bottom of the lake of shit and then record his reading. He did not find my shaking the boat funny in the least.  

Once I began my professional career, dealing with crap was more figurative than concrete. As an educator, I primarily dealt in bullshit - both giving and receiving. And I got pretty good at it. (See Bullshit Lit.)

So when I see a foreign object in privy, I get a pang of empathy for the poor ranger or sanitation worker who will need to fish it out manually. I've been there; done that. Were I to ever catch someone in this despicable act, I would sentence them to a week of public service - cleaning porta potties. Not a death sentence, but perhaps the next best thing.