The Old Coot Can’t Find a Terlit!
By Merlin Lessler
This is a subject that nobody talks about.
Yet, it’s a serious problem, has been for decades. We’ve got a “terlit” crisis
on our hands, at least that’s how they say it in Brooklyn. In the rest of the
country, it’s called a rest room crisis.
There aren’t any! At least when you need one. Public rest rooms are
scarcer than proverbial hen’s teeth. Our government has turned its’ back on the
issue. They’ve thrown us a few bones, there are rest rooms along interstate
highways and sometimes we are allowed to use the facilities in municipal
buildings, provided we get there on Monday through Friday between nine and
five, it isn’t a public holiday, we are wearing a mask and we can make it
through the security checkpoint with a nail clipper (or some other deadly
weapon) in our pocket. But, for the most part, our elected officials have
ignored the “terlit” crisis.
Actually, they haven’t just ignored it;
they’ve exacerbated it. They’ve made nature’s call a crime. If there aren’t
public “facilities” around and you get caught with your pants down behind a
bush, you will be arrested. We’ve just finished an election cycle and not a
single candidate mentioned the terlit crisis. Politicians have strapped us in
our cars, taken cell phones out of our hands, defaced all the products we buy
with warning labels and are forcing our favorite restaurants to prepare food in
politically correct cooking oil, but they stick their heads in the sand when we
ask them, “Can I use the terlit please?” Candidates are promising all kinds of
new programs: free health care, $5,000 savings bonds for new babies, 401-K
accounts but not one word about what we’re supposed to do when we’ve had three
cups of coffee and are looking for a public rest room. “Go find a gas station,”
they tell us.
We’re lucky; there is a public rest room
in our village (it’s in the same building as the Tioga Visitor center, on Front
Street). The town also provides rest rooms, those are at Hickories Park. I walk
there quite often; it’s a busy place. A lot of walkers, runners, skaters,
bikers, sled riders, x-country skiers, picknickers and kids go there. Even in
the winter! I thought we had a Terlit crisis this fall. The rest rooms were
locked, and all the port-o-johns were removed. The whole place became a rest
room; find your favorite bush.
But I was wrong. I called Town Supervisor,
Don Castellucci, to complain, my favorite pastime. He thanked me for the heads
up and said he’d check into it and fix it. HE DID. The bathroom on the hill in
the main campground is heated and open, though the road to it is closed. But,
so what; we’re there to get exercise. They also plan to install a port-a john
on the other side of the creek, in the vicinity of the dog park. All they need
to do, is add a message to the bathroom closed signs, that says the one on the
hill is open. As for the rest of the country, maybe some entrepreneur will come
along and figure out that there is money to be made, and a lot of it, by simply
opening a chain of public Terlits, like the ones in many European countries. I
hope so. I hate to keep asking, “Where’s the Terlit!”
Comments, complaints? Send to –
mlessler7@gmail.com
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