The Electric Outhouse

There is something silly about wiring an outhouse for electricity.
Old enough to have grown up with outhouses, I find the exercise absurd,
but I am making a mental list of the materials I will need, including a gas mask.

Our log house, in Iowa, is a two-story building, set down into a hillside.
The main entry is on the upper floor, and a long walkway connects
to the top floor of the outhouse, which itself has two floors.
Suffice it to say that a long plastic water-main tube reaches down
to a chamber below the ground-floor level of the elegant facility.

It has been my intention to carve on a plaque the formula
for calculating the acceleration of falling objects through the atmosphere,
next to a modest little stopwatch, just to give the customers something
to keep them interested; something like deriving the distance traveled,
but sheer sloth has made the project wait. Life in the country moves slower.

Some day, if I live longer than Methusela, I will convert the upper floor
of that ignoble little facility into a writing studio. It looks out through
the upper branches of the trees growing on the hill, some of which seem,
in later years, to have thrived at the nutriments they had not had before.
Moreover, it is cold out there in mid-winter. And dark. So I shall insulate
the upper floor, and put up wallboard, but first I have to wire for electricity.

I know you are interested in this project,
so I will try to keep you informed.
There is no need to thank me.

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