Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Our Great Nation

Now I lived in Southern New England for four years of my life.  Its ways are not unfamiliar to me.  But having lived mid-Atlantic style for the past 7.5 years, sometimes I need a reminder as to the charms of one of the cradles of our fine nation.

This past weekend brought a kind of vacation to nowhere in particular, and the home base, in Northern Connecticut, was chosen for a supposedly haunted but generally fine (ie unremarkable) hotel.  The building was a classic one, and that means the HVAC system - things were very hot or very cold - and especially the plumbing.

Now this is not unique to New England, I've certainly seen it upstate New York and I imagine from New Mexico to Tennessee to Idaho you could encounter this, but being a city boy, there's a kind of old, taking-its-time, slow-flushing toilet that I both dread and admire.  Not that I personally clog these suckers much, I'm an easy flushing sort of fellow, I try to keep things trim and passable.  But that first time you flush such a toilet and perceive its slowness, there's kind of a oh here we are feeling that washes over you.

And it's good to be reminded where you come from, so it's not a bad thing that a person shits into one of these fine specimens some times, but it's more of a vacation thing than anything I'd want all the time.  And surely, things get more complicated when you go to other continents.