Bangus Online Magazine
NORTH BAY— Ralph Emerson Palmer is on a mission. He would like to see all indoor plumbing banned through a municipal bylaw proposal that he presented to council last Wednesday. Scrawled out on a roll of two-ply toilet paper, Mr. Palmer claimed that the “sacred scroll” was a collection of six names that would like to see indoor plumbing banned. Palmer told council that he has ‘irrefutable’ proof that the rampant use of “fancy toilets” has contributed directly to the perceived regression of society into a pack of ‘uncivilized philistines.’ He has demanded that council take quick and deliberate steps.
After being escorted out of the building by security, Mr. Palmer spoke briefly with Bangus, reading from his parchment. “Since the advent of the indoor toilet we’ve become a crazed race of capitalistic profiteers and war mongers. The outhouse was once a place of meeting and community. We met and exchanged philosophies and ideas. We shared copies of The Farmers Almanac and Readers Digest. Now? Indoor toilets seem to be everywhere and people don’t seem to be communicating as much.”
During a subsequent interview, Mr. Palmer spat out a two hour rant of incoherent philosophizing at his tiny apartment on First Avenue. The residence was cramped but well kept. A bird chirped from a small brass cage hanging by the single window. Over coffee, Palmer pined over the simpler times when he was a boy living out in Papineau Township helping run the family farm and reading Sartre in the outhouse.“Today it’s all this Internet and cashless society bunk and people being beat up with sticks. We must scourge North Bay of the root of all this evil—the indoor toilet.”
As an alternative he suggested a communal pit where shuttles would be provided free of charge by the city. We broke bread together. I had the meat loaf and some strong coffee then it happened, as it usually does with me and meat loaf. He smiled as I rubbed my stomach. He pointed towards the bathroom down the hall. The toilet’s lid was firmly wrapped shut with thick layers of heavy gauge duct tape. I could hear him laughing from the kitchen.
was once a place of meeting and community.”
Behind a tin machine a crippled looking wooden structure canted precariously like the Tower of Pisa but smaller and with only a well-behaved cluster of tourists from Billings. Carved into the door was a tiny crescent moon. Inside on a string, a jaundiced, heavily thumbed copy of the Farmers Almanac from 1947 hung from the wall. Nebraska had a wet summer. Later, back in the kitchen, Mr. Palmer was optimistic about what has become somewhat as a divine mission. “This is now my divine mission. I have faith in North Bay and council and I think when they realize the dangers in the insidious proliferation of indoor plumbing in our city, they will be forced to act.”
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