David Heiller
Warning: This column contains
graphic language about cold weather, bodily functions, and outhouses. Parental discretion
is advised.
Those words of caution are
issued for my mother, who became so disgusted with my last outhouse column that
she couldn’t finish reading it. She stopped just short of flushing it down her indoor
model.
 |
| Noah and Joe were always busy figuring out the world as they knew it. I am sure that deep discussions on the dinosaur theories were always bubbling with these two. |
The outside thermometer read
17-below zero as I headed for the outhouse, in a quick step, Monday morning. That
may be balmy for Nickerson folks, but for me, it’s getting cold. Heading for the
outhouse, it’s downright arctic.
My grandmother once said they used
to put rabbit skins down on the outhouse opening mornings like this. I use a piece
of styrofoam made for this very purpose. It’s quite comfortable if you
don’t mind my saying so, especially
with long-johns pulled high.
Remember Mom, I warned you
about this column.
So in relative comfort on
Monday morning, I had a few minutes to look back on the past weekend.
Yes, cold is relative.
Sunday, visiting some friends, we spent several hours in below zero weather,
skiing and pulling our kids on sleds. I hooked a long rope onto their red
plastic sled, and tied it to a pack on my back. We circled through the yard,
over the new septic drain field, down under the clothes line, up around the
back of the house, then quickly down the driveway to where we started. The last
leg was so slick and easy that I would ask Noah and Joey, “Do you want to go
again? Are you cold yet?”
“No,” they would answer.
“Let’s go again!”
 |
| Our intrepid explorers and dinosaur theorists: Noah and Joey, 1986. |
The cold weather brought
out the dinosaur theories according to two four-year-old experts. I’m not
kidding, four-year-olds are experts in this the Year of the Dinosaur. They can
name their lizards faster than Shari Jensen can sew them.
“Where do grizzly bears
live, Daddy?” Noah started as they rested me during my workout.
“Out in the mountains, out
West, and in Alaska, “I answered.
“There aren’t any grizzly
bears,” Joey contended.
“Yes there are,” Noah
replied in a defensive tone. No grizzlies?! Noah worships grizzly bears. They
are the meanest animals, he thinks, since Tyrannosaurus Rex took his swan dive
into the Pleistocene.
“There aren’t any grizzly
bears,” Joey kept on. “Yes there are, aren’t there, Daddy?”
Their workhorse was
suddenly an animal expert.
“Yes there are, but they
don’t live around here,” I said in deference to Joey. “So Joey’s right, there
aren’t any around here. They live out
West.”
“And in Alaska,” Joey
added, saving face.
“But dinosaurs are dead,
Daddy?” Noah keeps asking that question, making the grizzly earn its keep.
“You know how they died,
Joey?” Noah continued. They had spent half the night before in bed, discussing
their theories, but neither had sold his notion.
“There were big
ball-canoes [Ball-Kay-Noes], and they blew out all this smoke, and the
dinosaurs breathed in this smoke”—Noah drew in a deep breath— “and then they
couldn’t breathe because of the ball-canoes and they died.”
“And it was too cold for
them,” Joey added. “Yeah,” Noah quickly agreed. “It was too cold and smoky and
they died.”
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| Noah and Joey were always a duo from the time they were tiny. |
We made a few more turns
around the yard, then headed to a state park, until finally the kids looked
like their dinosaur heroes and headed inside.
All this flicked through
my mind Monday morning, where I sat in 17-below weather. But my reverie
shattered when I suddenly realized that there was no toilet paper in the
outhouse. I started to swear at my wife, but stopped short. She doesn’t use the
outhouse in the winter. “That darn Binti,” I muttered about our dog. Don’t ask
me why she would carry away a roll of toilet paper.
An old Sears-Roebuck
catalogue would have looked mighty tempting at that point.
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