12,237. RUDIMENTS, pt. 851

RUDIMENTS, pt. 851

(yeah, well)

I have always had a pretty

much randomly-associative

mind. That  -  along with a

creative bent  -  has often

enough gotten me into

trouble, or the displeasure

of others, at least. It happens

often, sometimes blandly,

others time as roughly as a

severe and vivid hallucination.

I've never filtered myself much,

nor stopped the effort. Most

others can't understand that.

They take offense at the

stupidest particle of the

matter at hand, as if by

pointing out the word 'fun'

in funeral means I'm belittling

their dead Uncle Charlie. Lighten

up, folks. If I operated in that

same fashion over things I hear

people saying, I'd be known as

the sledge-hammer skull masher.

There has to be a certain divide,

a difference between the active

mental life and the drudgery

that is the ordinary world, and

it takes a functional brain to

see that, make the leap, bridge

the gulf, and get on with

happiness. Or, for pity's sake,

go ahead and take your damned

Cap'n Crunch elsewhere.

-

Over the coarse of time, I've

wondered heavily about hundreds

of things. When I bought that

farmhouse in Pennsylvania,

out front, across the dirt road,

I guess maybe 50 or 60 paces

off, was an outhouse building.

It was the usual, red, wooden,

with a doorway, and a sliver

moon cut-out, etc. Probably

it was 80 or 100 years old.

There were two 'adult' seats in

it, and, at the end, and lower,

with a smaller seat-hole, a

child's seat. Whenever you

read of someone talking, in

their 'old' days, recollections

or old tales, you read of the

smell as they approached the

outhouse, or the odoriferous

stench it emitted, etc. The

cliched idea of an outhouse

had always been stench. Their

standards, yes, of cleanliness

and purity were much, much

different than ours  -  and they'd

probably laugh at us. Remember, a
hundred years ago from the 1970's

was the 1870's, with people yet

reeling from open corpses, raw

memories of the putrefied and

horrific dead and bloated, dying

or groaning, sometimes for days,

on farm fields and at streambeds.

We've denied all of that, in our

equally decrepit days. I used

to wonder, in light of all that,

how in the world the person or

people who started and began

the ideas of indoor toilets,

bathrooms and plumbing, etc.,

presented their ideas. The house

I was in, no longer needing that

outhouse, had taken two rooms,

one on each floor (there were

plenty of rooms, and I'm sure

none were missed), and had

them converted into the rooms

of the newly-installed toilets and

plumbing. I don't know when, or

any of that  -  they were larger

rooms, just basic square places

that had once been bedrooms.

They were purely utilitarian

at that point. I wondered how

much convincing it took to

bring people around to the idea

of having all that inside their

own homes? "You mean you're

bringing the outhouse in here?

That's what I heard? You're

saying that a flow of water

will cover all this over, no

smell, no mess, and take it

swiftly away and OUT of

the house? To somewhere else?

Hmmm. Isn't that just really

making two outhouses? How

do you propose this to work?"

It all would have gone on

from there, I guess. Bringing

in experts from what were then

called the 'Sanitary Commission,'

to explain and go over all this at

local meetings and meeting halls.

Convincing the old codgers it

might work, they'd no longer have

to slog through the weather, wet.

cold, snow, rain. A certain ease

of living would be given to them?

Boy, that must have been a hard

sell. I can only imagine. The

idea of the 'water closet' was

a new idea indeed.

-

In all my dealings with that scene,

no one ever made mention of the

period of transition. Up and

through those old Bradford County

Hills, there were outhouses like

that, unused, everywhere. Either

they became tool sheds, or were

filled with tires and junk, or

firewood. They sure lingered, but

I never saw a'one in use, so I

guess the other idea took. It's

funny how we just move on

from things, and in a generation

or two the idea of how the original

idea took hold was gone. I found

that with lots: ice; refrigeration;

hard-surface roadways, driveways,

and more. Another good one that,

this one, I often mentioned and

pointed out, was about how many

of those older homes were only

electrified later on. When you

went in many of these homes,

mine included, in parts, you'd

see a straight line, of thick,

fabric insulated wire or conduit,

running down each wall, into

or towards a baseboard and a

plug or two. Very minimal. In

some homes, with the wires,

you could see they had been

painted over many times;

others had them nicely

covered with a good quality

molding, perhaps. Anyway,

past the  time of lanterns and

open flame lighting, and gas,

these were all retro-fits inside

the homes for that new-fangled

'lectricity that had come around.

Now, when they build, yes, it's 
all part of the initial design and
construction, inside walls,

in metal junction boxes, well

concealed and protected too.

That then must have been a real

job, for convincing people to

take a chance on:  as the streets

and dirt lanes and all the rest

were slowly, over time, being

wired and given poles. I'd imagine,

in every case, it began in the

larger 'centers' of each town,

and village, burg and city. Maybe

once the larger places got it all

and seemed comfortable with it,

and after a long time (and of

course the needed expansion of

the 'Government' up into the

high-hills and low-hollows, where

the people were way more solitary,

out of touch, and not as attuned

to the mainstream of things),

everyone else accepted it more.

Such modernizations could

have been a real battle, a hit to

the head. Those sorts of folk

don't take kindly to change, and

even less to 'taxable' services

they hadn't asked for. Toilets,

water, and electric light. 'First

I gotta' pay for my own ass, and

now again, they want me to pay

for my eyes.' Yeah, well. It's

about like that Jennings guy

I've written of, with all his

schoolbus fights.

-

It was matters like that which

always kept me just one step,

it seemed, astray from others.

The questionable aspects of

things, that 'other' side of the

coin. it still goes on. Like, right

here, where we live now, as

a for instance  -  there's a

fire official, who's also a

Councilman. I wonder, what

do we get, really, for our money?

We pay for his salary and his

'services,' clipboarding fire

exams and reports. He gets a 

vehicle, gasoline services, and

the rest. OK, that's fine, and

part of the deal, I guess. Now, 

the 'Councilman' part  -  others

who are councilman have

corporate jobs, careers, etc.

They do their work, and the

'Council' part of it is kept separate

or done on their off-times. I

often wonder, the politicking 

of it all, the normal routine BS, 

when this fire guy is on the

books as a fire official, getting

paid, how much (if any) of

that salaried time is then spent,

within the confines of that

firehouse deal, on Council

business, which is not supposed

to happen on that payroll dollar.

What exactly do we get from 

that, and why is nothing ever

asked? It's like having that

late wiring brought into a

house, after the fact of the

house's construction. The 

add-on is obvious, as is the

paint and the molding 

covering it over. The

guy's got it made. He does

his Mayor's bidding, plays

the political angle, and the rest,

and we pay him. Hmmm?

Shouldn't there maybe become

an overlapping, conflict law put

put in place? Maybe he could 

even introduce it, at one of

them there meetings he sits at.

Of course, then he would have
to be on the spot for actually
doing something to advance his
community, and his representation 
of it instead of lap-dogging at the 
Mayor's lead-lines. There's no 
guarantee of any real 'competence,' 
with these sorts of things though.
Like I said in the beginning

I'm pretty much a randomly

associative guy. I know about

America, and the fabric of 

Democracy, and all that crap.

Things just never add up, and,

like the outhouse deal, it stinks.