A topic we never discuss

I’m betting that the title of this op-ed has led you to believe it’ll be political, correctly bashing some of those villains amongst our politicians who would be emperors, dictators, or worse. Writing about them is ever so tempting — but it’s also ever so fruitless. You’ve got to be at the heights of chutzpah to challenge the clever verbal contrivances of the Bret Stephenses and Thomas Friedmans of our world; to have your say when they clearly say it so much better. So I adjure you fellow Jerseyans, read them, and then come on over here to your favorite Jewspaper for something more benign.

Like toilets, for example!

I have often thought, when I’ve flown economy class, about how summers at the Bauman House should have been preparation for grueling airline trips. The two types of experiences share one maddening feature. They both lack sufficient toilets! The Bauman House is now gone forever, but I remember well that storied place with its most uncivilized lack of what were then called sanitary facilities, and the often-awful strategizing to get to one in time. The airlines, on the other hand, are still packing ’em in with about 50 passengers for each toilet. That statistic is not etched in stone. It’s just an average. And it is often worse. Rarely better. But as a member of the flying public who has flown to Israel hundreds of times (ten hours outbound, 12 hours return), and Australia and Singapore and China, to name a few, toilets just cannot be ignored. Your jaunts must be carefully plotted. You must be endlessly alert and creative. And when choosing a line, you must stand behind a woman. We are much more efficient in those scuzzy little places than that other gender!

Other important rules to know are that only fools go into those cubbies without shoes and that the very best time to make the trek is when everyone has a tray of food in front of them. My husband and I have made a veritable art form of passing our food back and forth between us so that we can escape the confines of our gruel.

And please, always try for speedy exits. They’re not pleasant places, but there will certainly be impatient fellow travelers awaiting their turns.

Parenthetically, I missed flying above Denali (yes, Denali) because the tourist plane had no lavatory. That’s my criterion for plane travel. It would be the same if I were flying over the Gulf of Mexico, btw! The lesson is that no matter how pathetic the lavatories are, we still need them.

Our Bauman House kuch alein had lots of bedrooms. Alas, none of them were equipped with what we pretentiously now call en suite bathrooms. Toilets were an afterthought, unsurprisingly. They didn’t become ubiquitous in the United States until the 1930s. Outhouses were all the rage. Catskill nights in the summer are really nippy. Just imagine the winters! Snow howling, wind screaming, temperatures below zero. The outhouses were pretty miserable places.

Our toilets were all add-ons to the original structures, and they were few indeed. In the Little House there was one, on a platform on the second floor, no doubt so that the plumbing could fit under the seat without raising the floors. It was at the end of a hall and always seemed to be occupied. Always! There was another on the first floor, also raised, and less popular, but never a charming place. It was more accessible but less convenient for those whose bedrooms were a flight above. Those two little lavatories served about 20 people, much better than on a plane, but not comparable to our homes today, when we each want a private lav and a shower or tub, or both, to call our own. And don’t forget the bidet!

The Big House was similarly endowed with two toilets, marked Gents and two called Ladies. That quartet served up to 75 guests. Impatient guests.

Sometime in the 1940s I remember our Bauman House also added two little outdoor huts with a single shower in each. I remember their construction and can never forget the ongoing newly formed summer parade of shower-takers, marching in their robes, towels aloft, swinging soap and shampoo, to the new shower. Lines grew, especially on Friday afternoons, when the husbands were arriving and looking to greet their beautiful wives, who were freshly anointed with lotions and potions, well rested from a delightful week of mah jongg and other relaxing vacation pursuits.

Those facilities in Parksville are mere memories, romanticized by nostalgia and my own old age, to make them more than they were.

The airplane toilets, however, can never be described as anything beyond abject, claustrophobic, foul smelling, germ filled outhouses, outhouses that never left us. They merely relocated.

Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of nine. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com

opinion

comments