cincibuck
You kids stay off my lawn!
Day Two, Part A:
<O:p</O:p
We awoke with enough time for me to hit the exercise room and put in a twenty-minute walk. Rejuvenated and tingling with anticipation I climbed back behind the wheel and we headed northeast again. Somewhere between the last tool booth of the New York Freeway and the first one on the Massachusetts’s, my third cup of breakfast coffee located my bladder. Why is it always the case that this never happens when your car is nearing empty and you are within sight of a gas station? One of Murphy’s laws of the roadway, I’m sure. I sat in misery as woods and hills and the meandering Mohawk River drifted by, but no sign of Exxon relief came into sight. And how is it that a corporation that just recorded profits of more than ten billion dollars can’t find the funds to put a toilet where you need it?
In desperation we exited the freeway at the first opportunity and took off down a country lane until we came to an intersection with a sign announcing, “East Boofoo ß1 Mile, Boofoo à5 Miles. Easy choice. East Boofoo turned out to be a couple of well-worn houses, a postage stamp sized Post Office and a general store now serving lunches from a counter. I opened the door and stepped back into a Washington Irving size time warp. It could have been 1936 from the looks of things. Six customers sat on stools, eating or waiting for the cook to finish their order. A teen-age girl was fetching soft dinks from a refrigerator. I looked around, saw no welcoming sign announcing, “RESTROOMS,” I paused for a second and then walked briskly for the rear of the room, sure that the sign was merely hidden from my view. Sure enough, there was a doorway with a dark red curtain hiding the cook… but no sign of a second doorway to the restroom. I walked back to the middle, befuddled, looking again, sure that I must have somehow missed the sign I sought. It was now that I noticed that the customers, locals I’m sure, looked at me, at all of us, as if we’d just blown in from Oz. The eyes of everyone, the teen-age girl, the six beefy customers and the young man stationed at the cash register bored in on us. I could read their suspicions, were we aliens on a body-snatching mission, cattlemen fixin’ to run the sheep herders out of the Dakotas or Feds aiming to wipe out the local bootleggers? I would not have been surprised if one of them had said, “We don’t cotton up to strangers in these parts,” or “Cheese it, it’s the cops!”
I hated to be so rude, but my bladder ached and I had a sense that I might suddenly begin to splash on the yellow oak floor beneath me. I made a beeline to the cashier, hopping up and down as he finished taking an order over the phone. I thought to order a sandwich. After all, nothing like business to open up a closed door, but I could think only of my greater need. The words blurted out of me, “Where’s the bathroom?”
He looked stunned for just a second. The folks on the stools gave me that, God- damn-tourists-look, and then dismissed me and my companions, and returned to their food, ready to bitch about the kind of out-of-town-yahoos who wander in just anywhere and demand you provide them with a piss pot. “We don’t have one,” he answered.
I looked at the six customers, the two workers and the dark red curtain that hid the cook and I just knew there was a toilet there somewhere. The sandwich order floated through my mind as did everything else. Here was an owner of the “NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE mentality. His un-posted code, “NO SANDWICH, NO TOILET.” It made good economic sense. But right now I was angry. Keep your damn food and your ‘Members Only’ toilet, we’ll take our business elsewhere, I thought to myself.
The others shrugged and we walked out to the gravel parking lot. We discussed options for a brief moment, but I had no patience for thinking things through. “Let’s get going now!” I snapped. We climbed back into the cars. By now my bladder anxiety was infecting all of us as we retraced our steps to the freeway and headed toward the next tollbooth. And why is it, I ask you, that turnpike authorities refuse to provide a restroom area next to the tollbooths? I mean, the roads are designed with limited access. Are you telling me they don’t see cars like ours, filled like ours, with straining passengers? No vans or SUVs filled with families and kids who didn’t go while Dad filled the tank, but now, fifteen minutes later, hands clamped onto their crotch, need to go “bad?” I don’t believe it for a second. How is it that congress can see fit to appropriate money for a bridge to connect two towns with populations of only a couple thousand in the middle of nowhere Alaska, but fails to see the need for potties for millions of turnpike travelers.
“Next service area ‘s only fifteen miles down the road,” the toll collector told us as I twitched in the passenger seat and contemplated refilling an empty Gatorade bottle resting on the floor behind the driver’s seat. There were some nervous moments before we at last reached the service island. The car no more than pulled into a parking spot than I threw open the door and took off like a receiver streaking down the sidelines, heading for the goal line, the Super Bowl victory staring me in the face.
<O:p</O:p
We awoke with enough time for me to hit the exercise room and put in a twenty-minute walk. Rejuvenated and tingling with anticipation I climbed back behind the wheel and we headed northeast again. Somewhere between the last tool booth of the New York Freeway and the first one on the Massachusetts’s, my third cup of breakfast coffee located my bladder. Why is it always the case that this never happens when your car is nearing empty and you are within sight of a gas station? One of Murphy’s laws of the roadway, I’m sure. I sat in misery as woods and hills and the meandering Mohawk River drifted by, but no sign of Exxon relief came into sight. And how is it that a corporation that just recorded profits of more than ten billion dollars can’t find the funds to put a toilet where you need it?
In desperation we exited the freeway at the first opportunity and took off down a country lane until we came to an intersection with a sign announcing, “East Boofoo ß1 Mile, Boofoo à5 Miles. Easy choice. East Boofoo turned out to be a couple of well-worn houses, a postage stamp sized Post Office and a general store now serving lunches from a counter. I opened the door and stepped back into a Washington Irving size time warp. It could have been 1936 from the looks of things. Six customers sat on stools, eating or waiting for the cook to finish their order. A teen-age girl was fetching soft dinks from a refrigerator. I looked around, saw no welcoming sign announcing, “RESTROOMS,” I paused for a second and then walked briskly for the rear of the room, sure that the sign was merely hidden from my view. Sure enough, there was a doorway with a dark red curtain hiding the cook… but no sign of a second doorway to the restroom. I walked back to the middle, befuddled, looking again, sure that I must have somehow missed the sign I sought. It was now that I noticed that the customers, locals I’m sure, looked at me, at all of us, as if we’d just blown in from Oz. The eyes of everyone, the teen-age girl, the six beefy customers and the young man stationed at the cash register bored in on us. I could read their suspicions, were we aliens on a body-snatching mission, cattlemen fixin’ to run the sheep herders out of the Dakotas or Feds aiming to wipe out the local bootleggers? I would not have been surprised if one of them had said, “We don’t cotton up to strangers in these parts,” or “Cheese it, it’s the cops!”
I hated to be so rude, but my bladder ached and I had a sense that I might suddenly begin to splash on the yellow oak floor beneath me. I made a beeline to the cashier, hopping up and down as he finished taking an order over the phone. I thought to order a sandwich. After all, nothing like business to open up a closed door, but I could think only of my greater need. The words blurted out of me, “Where’s the bathroom?”
He looked stunned for just a second. The folks on the stools gave me that, God- damn-tourists-look, and then dismissed me and my companions, and returned to their food, ready to bitch about the kind of out-of-town-yahoos who wander in just anywhere and demand you provide them with a piss pot. “We don’t have one,” he answered.
I looked at the six customers, the two workers and the dark red curtain that hid the cook and I just knew there was a toilet there somewhere. The sandwich order floated through my mind as did everything else. Here was an owner of the “NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE mentality. His un-posted code, “NO SANDWICH, NO TOILET.” It made good economic sense. But right now I was angry. Keep your damn food and your ‘Members Only’ toilet, we’ll take our business elsewhere, I thought to myself.
The others shrugged and we walked out to the gravel parking lot. We discussed options for a brief moment, but I had no patience for thinking things through. “Let’s get going now!” I snapped. We climbed back into the cars. By now my bladder anxiety was infecting all of us as we retraced our steps to the freeway and headed toward the next tollbooth. And why is it, I ask you, that turnpike authorities refuse to provide a restroom area next to the tollbooths? I mean, the roads are designed with limited access. Are you telling me they don’t see cars like ours, filled like ours, with straining passengers? No vans or SUVs filled with families and kids who didn’t go while Dad filled the tank, but now, fifteen minutes later, hands clamped onto their crotch, need to go “bad?” I don’t believe it for a second. How is it that congress can see fit to appropriate money for a bridge to connect two towns with populations of only a couple thousand in the middle of nowhere Alaska, but fails to see the need for potties for millions of turnpike travelers.
“Next service area ‘s only fifteen miles down the road,” the toll collector told us as I twitched in the passenger seat and contemplated refilling an empty Gatorade bottle resting on the floor behind the driver’s seat. There were some nervous moments before we at last reached the service island. The car no more than pulled into a parking spot than I threw open the door and took off like a receiver streaking down the sidelines, heading for the goal line, the Super Bowl victory staring me in the face.
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