VERBOTEN

My mother would turn over in her final resting place. Mr. Bob will be disgusted when he reads this, but the rebel in me is going to go ahead with my chosen subject today. It wasn't my intent when I set out to work on this daily entry, but as I riffled through my photographs, it became clear that a piece on bathrooms could be handled with good judgment.

When the Crones, our group of wise old women, met in November and went around the circle, taking turns telling what caused us to give thanks, I wasn't looking for the response of laughter that it received when I said that nary a day goes by in which I'm not profoundly grateful for indoor plumbing. And that's the truth!

As a child I experienced life with an outhouse on my uncle's farm and the novelty wore off with the first visit. My whole long life I've operated with just one bathroom in a household of people and while it worked out okay, one of my dreams was to have 2 bathrooms when we moved into a retirement facility. It was not to be and I'll have to be content with the realization that 1 bathroom is far superior to having to weather the elements to get to where I'm headed.

This is as good a time as any to tell you that in my shopkeeping days, once a year I disregarded Mr. Bob's objection and in our smallest of 3 display windows I made a 5 foot tall pyramid, using rolls of snowy, white toilet paper, leaving little ledges as I stacked them and on those makeshift shelves I placed books on the subject of toilet training for toddlers. We sold quite a few books that way and if nothing else, it was a traffic stopper for pedestrians who didn't know such books existed.

Men don't need to be so discerning, but most women I know are very particular about what public restrooms they use. I found one in Arroyo Grande which became a regular stop on our travels from south to north. It was very plain, but clean inside and the outside added several points to its rating. Add to that the fact that colorful chickens roam about the parking lot, and the stop is a real winner.

Another good place, when I can't talk Mr. Bob into traveling on the more interesting, but slower, Hwy. 101, can be found at Pyramid Lake's Visitors' Center on Hwy. 5. Because I've always been the main photographer on trips, I sometimes have to take a picture of myself just to remember that I was there.

I'm not the only one who succumbs to such temptation. Witness Mr. Bob's self portrait, portrait, portrait, portrait, portrait .............. taken in, of all places, our local car wash's restroom.

I'm waiting for America to latch on to the European idea of self-cleaning restrooms right there on sidewalks. It's often been said that the city of San Francisco is more reminiscent of cities in Europe than any other American metropolitan area and sure enough that's where I spied the following:

None of this "où est la salle de bains?" for those folks.