Dave Wood

We have recently made the self-indulgent purchase of a Toto toilet, which provides a heated seat, a warm water spigot which can be aimed and activated to take care of things toilet paper is designed for. At least it’s environmentally friendly!

 I’m so old that my first experience with bowel relief precedes any comfortable experience with Brit Thomas Crapper’s invention of the flush toilet. As a young boy, I resided with my parents on my Grandma Back’s farm. Our whole tribe used an unpainted outhouse, without so much as a half-moon carved into its wall. I was always puzzled why Blanch Whipple, mother’s fancy cousin from Eau Claire returned from a trip to said outhouse and giggled when she reported to the family, “When I finished, I reached back of me to activate the flush lever, but there was no flush lever there!’

A few years later we moved to a fancier farm where the outhouse was painted white with blue trim, to match our house. The outhouse was festooned with Morning Glories (blue, of course). Frosting on the cake: this monument to civility was a  “three-holer,” one of which was lower than the other two to accommodate my toddler’s frame. When the Morning Glories faded and the snow came, we retreated to the house and used a container my father called a “thunder mug.”

Years later, after grad school and smitten with my new bride and the idea of being somewhat Bohemian, we purchased a rundown farm near my hometown, complete with a run-down outhouse. I painted it inside and out, cut a hole in the wall, inserted a plastic stained glass window from Menard’s, installed a Northern Tissue dispenser to supplement an old Monkey Ward catalog and a book shelf which I stuffed with back issues of the New York Review of Books (I’m something of a snob) and at Ruth’s hygienic request (she’s from Chicago), a pail of barn lime with dipper.

Almost every summer, we’d shuck our hippie togs and spend a month in Europe, figuring it would be luxurious to enter the Crapper Era. But when we checked into the Olympia Hotel in London’s Sussex Gardens, we soon learned that a trip to its one-per-floor Crapper cum Bathtub required four-buckle overshoes after 12 other tenants had made use of its leaky plumbing. Plumber Mike Hawkins, where were you when duty called?

Things got better in a Swiss-run hotel in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe which boasted a bidet in every room. Unfortunately, we were from Wisconsin and didn’t know how to use one. So we headed for the rentable shower down the hall, mindful of movie director Billy Wilder’s telegram to his wife back in U.S. after she asked him to buy her a bidet while he was in Paris. His reply: “Dear: Bidets too costly. Suggest you stand on your head in the shower.”

Our next adventure de toilette in Munich was more frightening than relieving. One might call our hotel “Goebbels Platz,” for the curt desk clerk bore a startling resemblance to the late German Minister of Propaganda. Breakfast began at 7 and ended at 8. “Nein latekommer,” barked the clerk. After a hard pumpernickel roll and chickory rather than coffee (more evidence of Teutonic leanings!), I headed for the shower, which unlike the earlier iterations was huge and full of the hotel’s naked tenants. The showers were all on and the water—I think it was water—came out of the ceiling, and my imagination went wild. I quickly dressed and beat it next door to the Lowenbrau brewery hoping it would be open for a breakfast mug of golden goodness.

Next stop, the Hotel Margutta just off the Piazza del Populo in Rome. Friendly. Sweet rolls rather than a tiny biscotti for breakfast. Just one drawback. The shower head was located directly above the commode which you had to sit on while showering in order to “lave your oozy locks.” (see John Milton’s “Lycidas”).

Back in the US, Ruth and I decided to try out the new Thai restaurant in North Minneapolis. I ordered my meal, then asked the waitress to direct me to the toilet. “Follow me to the kitchen,” said the fetching Siamese cutie. Once there, she shoved the huge mobile butcher block aside to reveal a trapdoor with a ring opener. She flung open the floor door to reveal a stationary ladder into the basement and said, “It’s down there!” I obediently climbed down to discover a plywood platform upon which stood a plywood outhouse-type structure. There was no carved halfmoon, but I tried the door anyway and found a porcelain throne by Kohler that actually had water in it, plus a chain hanging from the ceiling. Pull it and it flushed. Just like in Europe!

This last experience makes me think that for an old guy like me, maybe the purchase of a Toto is not so self-indulgent after all!

Dave would like to hear from readers, especially if they have a tale or two about a toilet. Phone him at 715-426-9554.