Our Privy
Never Plugged
Charlie Earl
OK, I admit
it. I’m a seasoned citizen, a golden-ager. Actually I’m a curmudgeonly old
fart. One of the advantages of getting older is the smug appreciation we have
for “the way things used to be.” As a child who was reared on a farm in North
Central-North West Ohio, I can fondly recall 1952. That was the year we got an
indoor bathroom, a reel-type power lawn mower and a 13” black and white
television console. Looking back I believe the lawn mower was the most
beneficial and enduring technological advance we acquired that year. Television
has definitely evolved into Newton Minnow’s “vast wasteland,” and our
government now regulates our toilets to the absurd point where we flush them
with a mere trickle of water. Our old two-hole privy was never plugged.
Granted it
was chilly in the winter as we trudged the several yards from the back door to
the lonely little building sitting away from the house. One never dawdled in
the outhouse when it was winter. Do your business and get on with it. It was
not cold in the summer, but there was no Glade, Fabreze or spray cans of Lysol
to minimize the pungency, so if one were inclined to linger in the privy
(reading catalogues?), spring and fall were the best times. There is no better
environment for developing reading skills than privy privacy. Corncobs were
optional.
The point of
this little saunter down Memory Lane is to emphasize that things worked well
without the good intentions of Nanny State gumming up the gears. We worked hard
and lacked many of the great advances of the present day, but we were contented
and optimistic. Technological advances have made our lives much easier these
days, but along came a government that believes itself obligated to insert its huge
proboscis into nearly every facet of our lives. Our privy never plugged, and we
didn’t have Big Brother’s representatives limiting our options in the outhouse.
Just as a
meddling mother-in-law can undermine a marriage so can a meddling Nanny State
mess up a country. Government, per se’, has
no more special expertise, skills or talents than do members of the private
sector. While it is possible for government to coerce tax money from citizens
in order to hire highly qualified minions, it does not necessarily follow that
the government “professionals” are more knowledgeable or qualified than their
private sector cohorts. Yet government has the advantage of using force to
assure that its remedies, proscriptions and preferences are dominant. The
private sector must provide superior products, better service or lower pricing
in a competitive marketplace. Government output has no real competition because
government edicts can favor the public sector over its non-public counterparts.
We need anti-trust or monopoly legislation to rein in the government.
My purpose
for using our old privy as a discussion starter is simply that despite all the
technological progress we have made in the past 60 years, our government and
its inane involvement in our lives has grown nearly as fast. Certainly many of
the old ways were less convenient for us, but government’s incessant
involvement in the minutiae of our daily lives has removed some of the joy from
our advances. It’s rather like suddenly discovering the liberating aspects of
nudism only to find oneself surrounded by mosquitoes. I suspect that the
constant efforts by governments at all levels to control every facet of our
lives may be a contributing factor in the levels of mad behavior that appear to
be rampant in our society.
If the
governments would pledge (assuming I could believe them) to leave me alone,
then I am eager to discard some modernization so that I might live with minimal
angst. It cannot happen. My NEW privy would violate some health code or obscure
EPA regulation. My great political and bureaucratic masters discourage my
consumption of raw milk, and in some venues they penalize owners of
wood-burning furnaces for polluting the air. The primary pollutant of our day
is an overzealous government apparatus that refuses to leave us alone. Enough ranting
from me ‘cause it’s time to grab an old catalog and hone my reading skills.
Charlie Earl
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