I always listen for it.  The sound of water running, running, running in the house.  Nine times out of ten it means that one of the toilets has an issue.  There are two Kohler toilets in my house that always seem to have a problem.  The latest has been a corroded flapper that needed replacing in both toilets simultaneously.

The other four toilets have a flush that’s so loud it could wake the dead.  My youngest son was terrified to flush the toilet in his bathroom when he was little.  He was afraid it would suck him down into a void of terror.  I will admit, the flush is so powerful it’s startling.  You have to push down the flusher and then run out of the room quickly before the “WHOOSH!!!” assaults you.

When I travel in the desert, I have my routine rest stops I prefer to use.  Ones that are clean and where I don’t feel like I’m going to catch a disease.  But sometimes they aren’t that easy to find.  There are some areas where they only have pit toilets like at many of the restrooms in Death Valley National Park.  Mostly they are fairly clean but some I avoid, knowing what awaits me inside.

There is something creepy about using pit toilets.  They are a more modern version of the outhouses of a time long past, but even though they aren’t a wooden shack with a carved out seat, there is something psychologically disturbing about them.  At least for me.  Maybe it’s the knowing that there is a black hole underneath where there might be something sinister waiting to pull you down inside.

I’m not sure if I’ve watched one too many Hitchcock and David Lynch movies, but I have this strange thought or fear of public restrooms, rest stops and pit toilets.  Especially if they are alone out in the middle of nowhere.  I walk in slowly and then carefully open the stall door, peeking inside and wondering if I might find a dead body.  I don’t know if I saw this in a movie once as a child, or what, but it actually would make a great scene in a horror flick.

It makes me laugh at myself and as I drive away and I think, “I really ought to write a screenplay for a horror movie.  This is good stuff.”  A therapist could have a field day with me.

Long before there were public rest stops and leaking toilets in homes, people had outhouses.  Some of the best-preserved outhouses I’ve seen from the early days are the ones at Bodie Ghost Town.  They’re everywhere behind houses and barns.  Some stand alone, leaning and propped up with a board so they don’t fall over and disintegrate.  I think they’re fascinating.  They are beautiful, really, in their own way, with carefully carved-out holes in the seats.

There are some that are side-by-side and others with double or even triple holes.  Which makes me wonder if people would go into the outhouse together to do their business, chatting about this and that, the weather, etc., just like we do when we go into a restroom with our friend, except we have the privacy of our own stall.  I cannot imagine sitting with someone right next me in an outhouse.

I think what strikes me the most when I look at these old outhouses is the fact that the people who used them had to do so no matter what the weather.  If there was a blizzard outside, well, you still had go wander out into the freezing snow to go to the bathroom.  They didn’t have the ease of just walking into the bathroom inside the house.  There was no bathroom.  They used the outhouse.

Then I think about the women in all of that clothing they wore in the 1800’s.  Skirts and petticoats.  Bloomers.  They had to deal with their clothing in order to sit down on that wooden seat.  And there really wasn’t a lot of privacy.  Your next door neighbor could see when you went outside to use the outhouse.  It was public information.  You couldn’t hide inside your own bathroom in privacy. Unless, of course, you wanted to use a chamber pot in the house, but chamber pots are a whole other story we won’t go into.

It makes me realize just how spoiled we really are with indoor plumbing and bathrooms.  We debate over whether or not the toilet paper should be hung over or under.  Have arguments about men not putting the seat down.  We have toilet bowl cleaners, deodorizers and sanitizers.  We are a society that is paranoid about the germs on toilets.  I don’t think that was a concern for the people who once lived in Bodie Ghost Town.

The next time I hear the tell-tale sound of water running, running, running in my house and I know it’s once again one of the Kohler toilets having an issue I’ll just remember the outhouses at Bodie.  I’ll be thankful for my indoor toilet where I know I can have privacy and I don’t have to worry about the neighbors watching me walk to and from the outhouse.   And I don’t have to get wet if it’s raining.