In the mid 1970s, I had opportunity to explore a massive old Victorian house that had sat empty for as long as I could recall. Even though it had been uninhabited for more than twenty years, it was still in fairly good shape. It was a gigantic brick building with ornate whitewashed woodwork on the porches, high ceilings, narrow tall multi-paned windows, and a cupola on the roof. I had toyed with the idea of sneaking a peek inside for some time before curiosity finally prevailed over common sense.
The place was situated on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. It sat back a good fifty yards from the road, and the facade was partly obscured from view by overgrown hedges and trees. I decided to explore it on a whim late one afternoon in the fall on the way home from work.
I pulled the car into what was once a driveway and went in. The house was as silent as a tomb. As it was quite late in the year, it was also very cold. I wandered from room to room noting the numerous heavily decorated fireplaces, the elaborate ceiling moldings, and the accumulated dust that blanketed everything. I scoped out the ground floor, then went to the second story. I was particularly impressed with the bathroom -- it had an enormous old clawfoot tub with exposed brass plumbing, an ornate pedestal sink, and a toilet right out of the 1890s.
The toilet featured a very large round bowl and a tank perched atop a brass pipe about three feet above the bowl. It had a fancy chain with a porcelain handle to pull to flush it. The whole room was wainscoted in dark wood. In all, a most luxurious crapper.
The rest of the floor was unexciting. It was devoid of furnishings, as was the first floor and the attic. After I had checked out the entire house and was preparing to leave, I became aware that I needed to have a bowel movement in a bad way. Over the years I had become accustomed to the sudden intense calls of nature, but I was caught totally unprepared when it hit now. What to do? There was the bathroom on the second floor, but no one had sat on that throne since Eisenhower was in office. There were no close stores or gas stations to go to. Although there were a couple of farmhouses within a mile or so of the house, I was unsure of the proper etiquette for going to a complete stranger's home and announcing that I needed to take a shit. It was getting dark out, and a mix of rain and wet snow was starting to fall.
Faced with no other choice, I went back up to the bathroom. I brushed the dust off the seat, snagged the cobwebs out of the bowl with an old coat hanger I'd found, dropped my drawers, and preceded to give birth to a massive brown behemoth. It was an impressive shit, even for me. I thought fleetingly how good it would look mounted on the wall over a fireplace. Then it occurred to me: I had not considered the clean up. What could I use to wipe with? A frantic glance around the room noted that there was a roll of toilet paper over near the window. Some of the panes were broken, and the paper had apparently gotten wet over the years -- it was wrinkly, brownish, and totally gross. But I was desperate. I peeled some usable but nasty-looking paper off the roll, after killing a spider so big it needed its own zip code that had taken up residence in the tube.
I did my clean-up thing in record time (thank heaven it was a clean shit, not a smear job), pulled up my pants, and reached around to pull the chain. Nothing happened. Duh. There hadn't been water inside those pipes since before I was born. I made a frantic search around the house for a bucket to get water in to flush. That was really fun, as it was nearly black inside by then. I didn't feel so bad about not finding anything after I realized that I had nothing to fill it with. Again, duh.
Since no other options were available, I left my errant turd somewhat reluctantly in the antique toilet. On the way back to the main road, the absurdity of leaving a huge load in a dry toilet in an abandoned house hit home. I laughed myself right into a ditch. Fortunately I was able to get out, and made it safely back home.
The next spring I stopped back at the old house and ran up to check the toilet. My log was still there. What did I think -- someone was going to come and steal it? Once more, duh. It was dried-up and looked a bit dusty, and the cobwebs were back, but there it was, lying in state like Lenin in a porcelain crypt.
After that, I never did get back in that house -- I moved out of state that summer. I can't help but wonder how long that log will lay there.