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 The Search For The Toilet GraveyardPosted 01.19.2006 by SamDamnit (1192)
The city of Austin offers a low-flow toilet rebate program, in which they replace your old water-guzzler with a brand new 1.6-gallon flusher. As an Austin resident and a PoopReporter, I set out to look into it, wondering mostly what they did with the old toilets. I was picturing some thing like the "porn for bibles" or "cash for guns" exchange programs. Bouncing the idea around, I began to visualize a GREAT TOILET GRAVEYARD. I pictured a simmering sea of porcelain thrones stretching for miles in every direction. Perhaps there would be plants growing out of them. Who knows? There could even be a colony of artists who venture out daily into the land of dead dump doors to smash them and make beautiful mosaics from the shards. I knew it had to be out there -- and I knew that I was just the man to find it.
First thing's first: I wrote to the city and asked where the old toilets are taken. While waiting for their response, I thought about my old toilets and how I had lost them. I have been in my current abode for a good twelve years, and in that time I have gone through two toilets. The first one broke while I was sitting on it. I was reading a magazine at the time. I was pooping your average, everyday kind of poop. I was not in any sort of traumatic situation -- until I heard a sharp CRACK. I felt the toilet start to slide out from under me. I dropped the magazine and grabbed the side of the bathtub. The top half of the bowl slid out from under me and a pool of poopeepee water started toward the carpet in my bedroom. Shaking off my initial shock, I bolted for the doorway and opened the hamper that sits just before it. My dirty clothes spilled out, forming an improvised dookie dam. Once I got the water to stop flowing, I assessed the damage. The toilet seemed to have cracked from where the bolts held it to the floor. The cracks ran in to each other at to the point where the bowl meets the tank. The bathroom looked as if there had been a sort of mudslide. In fact -- there had been. There were a couple of turds sitting in the shallow water on the floor, looking a lot like two stranded New York sewer gators. I gingerly lifted them up in swaddling toilet paper and dumped them in my outside trash. I then mopped up the rest of the water, threw my now dirtier clothes in the bathtub, and called the landlord. My landlord is an amazing guy. I seem to fuck things up a lot, and he always comes riding in to the rescue without so much as a "What the hell were you thinking?". I once severed the Freon line in my refrigerator while defrosting it with a butcher knife. He bought me a new fridge and came over to install it. He is just that kind of landlord. In this case, he was very apologetic. He installed a new toilet, paid for my laundry, and bought me a nice bottle of single malt scotch. This must have been about 1997. Little did I know that the 1995 National Energy Policy Act had passed two years earlier, requiring low-flow toilets be used in all new installations to reduce water usage. I found myself more often than not having to flush twice. I began to miss my old toilet. About six years later, I noticed a crack creeping up the side of my toilet, coming from the point at which it was bolted to the floor. Remembering my past trauma, I called the landlord toot-sweet. He advised me that I not use the toilet and assured me he would be right over. He came with another toilet and had it installed in no time. I asked if I could keep the old one, thinking it would make a nice planter for the front yard. He thought about it for a moment, probably considering the cow bones I have hanging in my tree and the skulls I have sitting on my roof. I don't think he wanted me to piss the neighbors off any more than I already did. "I think I better dispose of it," he said. Not wanting to look a gift toilet in the mouth, I relented. However, I still felt a certain sense of loss. That toilet had been through some tough times with me, as had my original one. It was like losing a good friend for the second time. All of these memories went through my head as I waited for the city to write back about the GREAT TOILET GRAVEYARD. Remember the GREAT TOILET GRAVEYARD? This is a story about the GREAT TOILET GRAVEYARD. (My apologies to Arlo Guthrie.) The city finally wrote back. They told me that they do not pick up the old toilets -- they said that one can just put it out for "large item pick-up day" or take it to the dump. This was a bit distressing; but then I remembered my dear sainted landlord. Where did he take my old toilets? Would I be able to reunite with them? Were they being used for tile, or were they filled with potting soil in his back yard? My dreams of the GREAT TOILET GRAVEYARD were fading, but my hopes for a clASS reunion were starting to grow. I got on the blower and called my landlord. He was not at all shocked that I wanted to find my old toilets and commune with them -- he is pretty used to my eccentricities at this point. He sounded a bit sad when he told me that he did not have them. "I just take them over to Crump's and dump them out back with all the other toilets." ...! "All the other toilets?" I asked breathlessly. "Yep," he said. "I just add them to the big pile that is already there." The GREAT TOILET GRAVEYARD came shimmering back in to view. It was not a sea of toilets. It was a pyramid! It did exist! The end of my journey was at hand! I rallied and grabbed my pad, my pen, my long-suffering girlfriend, and an old disposable camera that I had sitting in my truck. On the way, I was getting more and more excited about breaking the big story. I was talking poor Mary Mary's ear off. "Here we see the valiant PoopReporter rushing to the scene with his crusty sidekick--" "Crusty sidekick?" she asked. "Yeah. Get it? Poop -- crust? You'll need a name for the PoopReport story." "There is no way that you are calling me crusty! Just call me Mary Mary, like you always do." "Right!" Nothing was going to get me down. I pulled up behind Crump Plumbing Supply and ran up to the fence surrounding their back lot. I saw a whole bunch of old water heaters and a lot PVC pipe. No toilets. I figured that the pyramid must be hidden by the building itself. I went inside and boldly introduced myself as "SamDamnit with The PoopReport." That got every one's attention, but no one said a word. I went on to give the description. "The PoopReport is an online journal that specializes in the intellectual appreciation of poop humor." This brought some smiles and a handshake from the owner of Crump -- Mr. Crump himself. He said, "We don't have any intellectuals here, except for him. " A bespectacled older gentleman smiled at me, and I nodded. I told them my whole story, starting with the low-flow toilet program, leading to asking my landlord where toilets go when they die, and ending with my realization that they were the guardians of the GREAT TOILET GRAVEYARD. "So that's who's been dumping toilets out back! Give me his name and address!" I froze, terrified that I had just finked on my landlord, until I saw all the smiles in the room. These guys were having some fun with this faithful PoopReporter. Mr. Crump explained to me that the local plumbers do bring the used toilets here and dump them in the dumpster out back. There are often so many that they end up piled around the dumpster. We went out to look at the dumper dumpster. It was of average size and had about four toilets visible amongst the other refuse. I was terribly disappointed. I think that the bespectacled fellow noticed this, because he started telling me some of the history behind the low-flow toilets. Still stunned by having my dreams of a giant toilet pyramid shattered, I did not do my PoopReporter doodie and write it all down. I do remember that he tied some of it in to international politics and the events of 9/11. Mr. Crump then offered to show me the best way to actually conserve water in your toilet. We went in to his store's bathroom and he showed me the dual flush mechanism. You push one button for "number one" and one for "number two." Of course, the number one button only uses half the amount of water that the number two uses. He then showed me some different toilet models. I saw one that looked like my original toilet and felt a pang of nostalgia. He told me that the best of the bunch was a Turkish toilet. "They've been trying to conserve water for a lot longer than we have," he said. The Turkish bowls had bigger apertures so that the poop would not get stuck in the hole on the way out. They also had a smoothed surface inside the poop chute that kept the poo and paper from getting snagged. Most importantly, they had one less turn in the dogleg of the poop chute -- one less corner for stuff to get stuck in. All around, the Turks seemed to have the best toilets. I left Crump's with a head full of toilet knowledge and a good feeling all around. If you ever need a new toilet, I suggest you go to Crump's. They really know their shit. While you are there, go out back and take a gander at the GREAT TOILET GRAVE... er... DUMPSTER.
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