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The Electric Outhouse: Lipstick on a Pig



We drove for three hours, south through No Man's Land,
which the occupants have tried to glamorize by calling it,
"Rochester".  Rochester, home to Mayo Clinic, IBM,
and quite a large number of Canada geese that refuse
to go south for the winter, is a colorful city only in comparison
to the insides of the refrigerator display at Home Depot.
Rochester is populated with doctors, lawyers,
computer programmers, and geese that freeze solid.

Mari brought a book to read, and I had the big, ugly
trailer stuffed with lawn mowers, tools, and dry wall.
I was going to finish sheet-rocking the Electric Outhouse,
and if there was time, to saw down a forest of weeds
growing in the field along the driveway.

We drove through thunderstorms, a weather front
backing toward the northwest, from where it had come,
angry that its intentions had been denied.  I was ready,
prepared to cut the drywall in the covered trailer,
and rubber-boot it into the two-story outhouse.

The outhouse is two-storied because it is on the same level
as the top story of the log house, connected by a walkway.
All together--top- and bottom-story--the "facility"
is more than twenty feet tall, plumbed by a long, plastic
water pipe barely able to squeeze up into an old, wood chair,
now serving, in a punitive reincarnation, for earlier sins.

"I can do this!", I kept saying.  "I can wrestle half-inch
drywall up fourteen feet, standing on the top of a six-foot
A-frame ladder, because the space does not allow
anything better, short of levitation, or common sense.

Mari examined the earlier work, and came back
to announce that it was possible to put lipstick on a pig.
Up until now, it was a fine idea with a plastic-piped chair
and two picture windows, but pretty rough and ready.
Now it was going to be electrified, insulated, dry-walled,
and very soon after, to be painted in a lovely combination
of hues stolen from an absurd place--maybe Rochester--
where doctors operate, lawyers sue the doctors,
and IBMers put it all on dandy new disk drives.


The storms backed away.
I managed death-defying feats.
The weed-field is astonished.
Next time I shall tape the seams.

I do not know why the major media are not covering
these events.  It is probably because of hopeless wars,
and the dumbing-down of the Republican Party,
and other sh..., stuff, that is not so pretty, such as trying
to put lipstick on Joe the Plumber, or Joe Wilson, or that
hockey-mom pit bull winking at us, from Alaska.


The part-time life, out in the woods, is a quiet respite
from political and cultural insanities.  It isn't always
genteel.  One has to get used to primitive life.
I overheard Mari say, to someone, that she had
just seen a turkey, in rubber boots, up on a ladder,
in the outhouse.  It takes getting used to.

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