On a quiet saturday in March, I was listening to Jack Jensen's seminar on
decoy use throughout the season at Turkey University at the Franklin, Wisconsin
Gander Mountain Store, when the Outhouse Lady tapped me on the shoulder.
Patricia Lorenz, a Wisconsinite with more stories in the "Chicken Soup for
the Soul" books than any other writer, had stopped by to show me and the store
manager her latest book, "Great American Outhouse Stories: the Hole Truth and
Nothing Butt." It's a hoot, to put it mildly. Here's a sample:a
"Suddenly Blaze began to chase a red squirrel back and forth in front of the
outhouse. When the frightened creature couldn't reach a tree in time to make
his escape, it dove down the drainage hole formed by the continual flow of
shower water in the back of the country commode.
At this point I have to try to understand the dilemma of the poor, hysterical
red squirrel and only guess at his frustration. Envision him racing along
that drainage hole which flowed directly into that terrible smelly black pit
directly under the seat of the outhouse.
Once he slipped into the terrible pit, the only light and hope of escape for
Mr. Squirrel was to jump up toward the shaft of light emanating between the
front of my body and the toilet seat. Escape was only a few feet away if he
could just hurl himself toward the light.
Well, he hurled himself, all right, but he missed the edge of the seat by
inches. In order to keep from falling back down into what was certainly no bed
of roses he clung to parts of my manhood I'd rather not remember, thank you.
Suffice it to say, my sleep level indicator shot into the red zone like a
rocket. One minute I was dozing in the warm sunlight letting it all hang out and
the next moment a furry creature had his claws firmly embedded in and was
passionately clinging to the family jewels. I let out a bass bellow that vibrated
and trembled into a soprano shriek that not only woke my wife in our shack
across the woods, but also woke the neighbor in his shack a mile down the road.
As I shot off the seat like a missile I probably knocked that squirrel
senseless as his body hit the front edge of the commode and he slipped back into the
dark hole below."
Patricia grew up in Rock Falls, Illinois, just across the river from
Sterling. It turns out that my college roomate, Steve, married her dentist's
daughter. They met when Steve spent the summer working in Sterling and living at the
home of another college classmate, Terry Brooks, the now-famous fantasy author
of the Sword of Shanara series. There's a lot more to that story, but the
rest can wait. Meanwhile, if you see Terry, tell him I still have the guitar he
sold me for 40 bucks in 1963, but enough digression...
"Outhouse Stories" will soon be available for purchase on Dan's Mall. Stay
tuned for that development.
I met Patricia via a review of "Outhouse Stories" sent to me by fellow
writer, L.A. Van Veghel. In an e-mail, Patricia mentioned yet another new book,
"Life's Too Short to Fold Your Underwear," recently published by Guideposts
Books. Her offer to let me post an excerpt on my website gave me the bright idea
of adding a new page, called "Guest Shot." Her story, "Life's too Short to
Sell your Airboat," is the third piece to grace that page. Here's a taste of it:
"Dad was showing off his boating skills to out-of-state relatives when he
headed the airboat back to a lagoon and zoomed onto a low peninsula of grass and
water lilies. The airboat started sashaying on a mud bank, and when Dad jerked
the throttle back, to pick up speed and pulled a fast ninety-degree turn, my
mother, who was perched on the starboard edge of the bus seats, was thrown
clear out of the boat.
Once we got off the mud slick and hit the water, the Beast, now cruising at
top thirty-five-mile-an-hour speed, was actually blasting over the water, not
through it, slapping the waves hard. That noise, plus the deafening sound of
the airplane engine, prevented me from getting Dad[base ']s attention right away. It
was two hundred or three hundred feet later before Dad finally caught on to why
I was waving my arms like a bird in take-off. He slowed down the engine so he could hear me tell him almost hysterically that during his circus maneuvers on the mud slick Mother had fallen out of the boat and was back there somewhere up to her waist in mud,
hollering her fool head off."
By the way, Patricia's dad is the rustic-looking dude on the cover of
"Outhouse Stories." To read the entire story, go to my website home page and click
on "Guest Shot."
Later...
7:22:53 PM 
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