“Just Disinfecting the Toilets, Ma’am”

Mt. Whitney Ranger Station, Lone Pine, CA – 1970

I wrote earlier that I would return to the subject of outhouses. Today, there is concern about hepatitis and numerous other unpronounceable diseases. Not so in the late 60’s.  The methods we used back then were the norm. The campground toilets had a concrete floor and either concrete or wooden walls, a roof, a wood or metal door, and an Angeles can; a metal riser covering the pit hole with a toilet seat and cover. One side was the Men’s, the other the Women’s, although both were exactly the same. Marion Borrell, assistant district ranger, would require that we occasionally, with Pine Sol, bucket, and stiff brush, get down on hands and knees and scrub the floors.

One afternoon in Lone Pine Campground I was in that very position when a camper stopped to use the bathroom. I apologized that I was cleaning the Men’s side, but told him he could go ahead and use the Women’s as they were the same.

The man used it and left. I didn’t think another thing about it until I got to the ranger station at the end of the day.

“Jon! Ben wants you in his office right now,” said Marion talking about Ben Casad our district ranger.

I can’t say that I sped right over to Ben’s office. I was taking my time and attempting to figure out what I had done wrong. I procrastinated as long as I could and knocked on Ben’s open door and walked in to learn my fate.

“What did you do today up in Lone Pine Campground?” Ben asked in a very serious tone.

I must have looked like an idiot. I just stood there not knowing what to say. It got worse. Marion walked into the room and told me to sit down. This was the end of my very short career with the Forest Service and maybe even the Federal government.

Ben and Marion both smiled. “Jon,” began Ben, “a man drove all the way down from the campground just to tell me what a dedicated employee I have working for me. He was impressed that you were literally on your hands and knees cleaning the toilet. He said it was nice to use a clean restroom out in the wilds and wanted to make sure you were recognized.”

Two things happened that day. I received my first compliment from the user public. And I discovered that you can have all sorts of nice amenities in a campground, but if you don’t have clean, nice smelling bathrooms, that’s all most people will remember.

*   *   *

In 1970, all the restrooms at the Whitney Portal were old and needed to be replaced. There were no monies allocated, so it was a challenge to keep them clean and fragrant.

Tom Klepperich was now the assistant district ranger in charge of the front country recreation program. James Arasim was now district ranger as Ben Casad had retired over the previous winter.

Tom asked me to head up to the Whitney Portal and spray all the insides of all the pit toilet vaults with a chemical that is mixed with mineral oil. The concoction lessens the obnoxious smell and the oil coats the pit walls so the chemical will stick.

Rod, the recreation technician, handed me a canister pump and partially filled it with the chemical. He then pointed me to a 55 gallon drum with a sign over it labeling it as mineral oil. He told me to fill up the rest of the canister with the oil.

I drove up the eleven miles to the Whitney Portal and went right to work. There were at least a dozen toilets, many with two pit holes. I really saturated the insides of those toilet vaults using the spray nozzle on the canister pump. Already the toilets smelled oh so much better.

I finished up with the last of the toilets and headed back to Lone Pine. I was just cleaning out my truck when district ranger Arasim came out to the ware yard looking ashen and worried.

Tom Klepperich, Rod, myself and some of the other summer seasonals walked over to Arasim.

“What’s the matter Jim?” asked Tom.

“A man just came down here from the Whitney Portal,” started Jim. “He said he was sitting on a toilet, pulled out a cigarette, lit a match, and tossed it down the toilet. Suddenly he was blown off the toilet by an explosion!”

“I sent him down to the hospital and told him the Forest Service would pay for his medical expense,” added Jim.

At that point Rod and I looked at each other. I pulled out the canister I used to saturate the pit toilets. I poured out a little liquid onto the ground. Rod lit a match and bent down to the liquid. It burned!

We smelled it. Gasoline. We all went over to the three 55 gallon drums. The mineral oil drum had been placed in the slot belonging to the gasoline drum and vice versa.

“Oh crap!” I thought. “Oh shit!” said Jim out loud.

Walt Pettis and James Q. Brown jumped into the fire prevention truck with its pump, tank full of water, and fire hose. I rode passenger in another vehicle with Tom. Can’t say the speed limit was adhered to as we sped up the steep road to the Portal.

We did not know exactly what to expect when we parked the two vehicles next to the toilet near the Whitney Portal store. Just for safety we donned leather gloves and hard hats. Pettis and Brown staged by their fire truck in case it was needed. Tom and I slowly approached the restroom and made sure it was not occupied. He lifted up the toilet seat so the pit toilet hole would be accessible.

“I’ll light a fusee [like a road flare] and drop it in,” said Tom.

I opened the door and stepped back. Tom struck the end of the fusee, lighting it, and tossed it into the toilet hole.

WHOMP! The Angeles can was blown up into the air and hit the roof of the bathroom. Flames came up out of the toilet vault. Tom, who was a redhead, turned to us with his eyes wild and his face as red as his hair.

“Holy shit!” said Walt.

“We’d better hurry up and do all the other toilets before someone lights another match,” I said.

We drove up to the trailhead and day-use area near the small fishing pond. This time we took off both Angeles cans on the Men’s and Women’s sides and set them outside on the ground.

Tom stood next to the bathroom door ready to light the fusee. Just then a mother walked up with a small boy holding her hand to use the bathroom.

“What’s going on?” the woman asked Walt.

“Don’t worry ma’am,” answered Walt. “We’re just disinfecting the toilets.”

Just at that moment Tom tossed in the fusee.

WHOMP! Flames again came out of both pit toilet vaults and the doors blew wide open. Flames also came up through the roof vent pipes. The mother grabbed her child in her arms and ran off; probably telling her husband to pack up and leave.

We finished the remainder of the toilets which were old and wooden. They must have had leaks as none of them had any kind of explosion.

District ranger Arasim was waiting for us when we returned to the ranger station. We told him what happened with the fusees at the first two toilets.

“The flames went how high?” he asked. “And it blew off the Angeles cans?”

Then Walt told the story of the mother and child and that we were, “just disinfecting the toilets”.

All at the same time we started to giggle like school boys. Then the giggles turned to out and out laughter. We noticed that Arasim was laughing harder and now had tears in his eyes.

“Guys,” said Arasim, “when the man came into my office and told me what happened, his eyebrows were singed.”  And then, doubled over laughing, he could barely spit out, “If his eyebrows were singed, what do you think his privates looked like?”

Arasim finally calmed down to where he could speak. He told us he had checked to make sure the man was okay, he had left the hospital, and was now checked into a motel.

“I told him we were very concerned for him and were glad he was not seriously hurt,” said Arasim. “And then I told him that he should never ever throw a lighted match in an outhouse due to ‘natural gases’. But I told him he wouldn’t get a citation as he’d already gone through so much.”

This was back in the days before lawyers sued for hot coffee burns at McDonald’s.

There is an epilogue to this story. At the end of the year the Forest Service, BLM, National Park Service, as well as some state natural resource agencies held a meeting at the forest supervisor’s office in Bishop to talk over the year’s accomplishments and setbacks. A manager with the BLM got up and said that one of their toilets had been vandalized. Someone had dropped in a stick of dynamite and blew it up.

James Arasim, with a big smile on his face, started to stand up to tell of the man we blew up on a toilet. But the forest supervisor for the Inyo National Forest grabbed Arasim’s arm, squeezing it tight, he pulled Jim back down into his seat and whispered in his ear, “Don’t you even think about it”.