American Thighs

by Jill Conner Browne

  At any rate, my seester, Judy, and I would hear that “MERCIFUL HEAVENS!” as Mama led the way into the privy and we would know pretty much what we could expect to see when we rounded the corner. Mama always went in first, to survey the territory and devise a plan. A plan was needed to ensure that we somehow managed to relieve ourselves in the blighted facilities available without actually touching ANY surface in the area with ANY part of our anatomies. We could not touch the doors, the walls, or the receptacle that held the toilet paper—only the paper itsveryself.

  But first, Mama would go into the stall and cover every visible surface with miles and piles of toilet paper. I wonder how many acres of timberlands were deforested because of her papering proclivities. Often, by the time her work was complete, we could not even see the water in the toilet bowl. Once the entire toilet and surrounding area were completely swathed in its protective toilet paper armor—then and only then would one of us be allowed to enter the stall and assume the rigorous posture of the Female Attempting the Torturous and Very Delicate Process of Endeavoring to Urinate While Standing. (I am certain this must be one of THE most advanced yoga postures of all. I bet there are ancient Sanskrit scrolls with drawings depicting it as one of the last postures to be mastered before transcending this world entirely.)

  But we were expected to master it and assume it WHENEVER we used any restroom that was not in our own personal home or that of someone we were either related to or knew so well we were practically related to them. I mean, if we weren’t allowed to touch the DOOR HANDLE of the stall—lest we contract some hideous, painful, disfiguring, deadly, and, of course, socially embarrassing disease—do you imagine for one second that we were allowed to have the slightest whisper of a brush with the true epicenter of worldwide nasty germiness—the actual COMMODE itself?

  I can’t really fathom what Mama would have done if this had ever happened—either by accident or design—the thought of defying Mama’s Restroom Edicts never occurred to us, and our youthful THIGHS never failed us—quiver though they might, they always held our Precious Private Parts well in the clear of those beshrouded bowls. Faced with failure, I suppose she would have had no choice but to have us shot on the spot—as the only humane solution. “John, hunny, bring the pistol—the girls sat on this nasty pot, you’re gon’ have to put ’em down!”

  The touching taboo, of course, also extended to the flushing handle of the toilet. No matter how high above the floor it might be situated, we were commanded and expected to reach it and somehow push it down with our foot. This feat alone explains the amazing high-kick prowess of Southern dance troupes and cheerleaders. We—all of us—have been working on that move since we were potty-trained. Don’t think for one second that this stringent bathroom ritual was peculiar to just my own Yankee mama. No, indeed—it’s ALL of ’em. Certainly no female born and reared by a mama who was born and reared south of the Mason-Dixon has EVER sat down on a public toilet OR flushed one with anything but her foot.

  If you accidentally dropped something—ANYTHING—Hope diamond, the actual tablets containing the Ten Commandments, your little brother, what-EV-ER—it was gone—into the trash it went—and no amount of tearful pleading could spare it from the waste bin—IN it MUST go—BUT NOT WITH YOUR BARE HANDS!

  If Mama happened to be preoccupied with her own THIGH-throbbing, hiney-hovering peeing performance and was therefore unavailable for personally handling the disposal of the floor-sullied article, she would holler instructions to you on the proper method to be employed. As if she could see you reaching bare-handed toward it, she would bark an echoing preemptive “DON’T TOUCH IT!” from inside the stall. No, you must first roll off approximately 2.75 miles of toilet paper (she could tell from the repetitive sound as you spun the roll of paper when you had amassed a sufficient quantity to make an effective germ barrier) and ball it up, over, and around the now-ruined-beyond-reclaim item on the floor and then pick up the entire mass, with your hand extended as far out in front of you as physically possible, and carry it over to the garbage pail, the swinging door of which you must also somehow NOT touch with your naked hand as you make your deposit. Your high kick would get yet another workout and you would have achieved an aerobic state from the absolutely futile sobbing you’d been doing ever since your Prized Possession first slipped from your grasp and landed with a telltale whump, thump, jingle, or swish on the floor. Whatever the sound—Mama heard it and knew in an instant what it represented—and you knew it, too—whatever it was—it was a Major Loss to YOU. And not only would Mama not relent on her iron-clad rule in this regard but there was also a very high probability that there would be further personal consequences for you as well on account of didn’t she just finish telling you to leave that in the car? And rest assured, whatever it was, you were NOT getting another one—EVER—and maybe NEXT time you’d MIND her.

  As I think on this, I see that there could be substantial savings available to any and all persons and businesses in the South that provide public restrooms for women—savings in water, cleaning supplies, and labor utilized in the sanitizing of those facilities. There is really no point to cleaning them because nobody’s ever going to come in contact with anything in there anyway. Just make sure you’ve got about eight gajillion rolls of toilet paper in stock at all times.

  Dubious Championship Brings Out Yankee-Style Snark

  One restroom stands out in the deepest recesses of my childhood memories as the #1 Nastiest Place on the Planet. Since attaining adulthood, I have traveled the world a goodly bit and I have seen some Nasty—but no matter what, no matter where, there is one place that has not and will not, in my opinion, ever be surpassed for its utter, complete, and constant state of indescribable filth. It was the ladies’ restroom in the Texaco station in Kosciusko, Mississippi, and desperation dictated its use on occasion when we passed through there on the way out to my grandparents’ house in Ethel—which, as you know, is a suburb of Kosciusko. Urgent calls of nature drove me to it many times in the years from about 1956 until around 1965, and I don’t think it was ever cleaned before or during that time. Furthermore, I think that before we could enter it, they had to run out the dozen or so wild hogs that apparently dwelled within, if one could believe what all one’s senses were telling one.

  Not only did it never fail to rate a “MERCIFUL HEAVENS” from her, that restroom actually could and did bring out the Yankee in my mama. As I said before—my own personal mama is a Yankee. Well, she could be and probably is. She was adopted, and no matter where she may have actually come into this world, she grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and thus, no matter how long she lives in Mississippi, there are just some Yankeeisms that WILL come out now and again.

  The one to which I am referring now is the way she would talk when she wanted to say something snarky to SOME-body but not necessarily EVERY-body in the room. Now, in this situation, Southern women will sort of drop their heads down and to the side and put their hand up sort of in front of their mouths and then say whatever awful thing it is they want to say in that most piercing whisper peculiar to them while they raise their eyebrows and roll their eyes in the general direction of whomever it is that they are talking about who’s not supposed to hear them. Mama, on the other hand, being the product if not the offspring of the meanest little German-Yankee woman who ever drew breath, would talk out of one side of her mouth—while not moving the other side—at all. She could—and still can—turn her head just ever so slightly off center so that the side facing the victim shows her lips to be motionless and silent while the side facing the one she was snarking to would have a mouth moving and spewing venom in an only slightly lowered and somewhat guttural tone. It’s like half a German ventriloquist.

  For example, let’s just say a woman walked in whom nobody’d seen in a spell and she had maybe put on a pound or thirty in the interim and she was perhaps moving in a slightly less-than-graceful manner, due, in part, to that additional weight, and possibly her hair, and makeup were not
looking especially fine that day either—well, her Southern “friends” might be observed thusly: adopting the head and hand posture earlier described and saying in the aforementioned knifelike inhaled whisper, “AHHHH, would you look at HER…bless her heart!” But Mama—and her German-Yankee mother before her—would do that quarter-turn with their heads and out of one side of their mouths they would utter one word: “Hunyuk.”

  Now, do not ask me what language that is or what the actual translation of it might be—but to hear one of those women say it out of the side of her mouth was enough to make me NEVER want to BE IT, whatever it is. If you’ve heard the word before and know anything about it—PLEASE e-mail me at hrhjill@sweetpotatoqueens.com and ’splain it to me!

  Anyway, that nasty restroom would make Mama talk out of the side of her mouth every time. How in the world did I end up here? I was talking about me and Rhonda traveling with Daddy in the summer and then I got off on Stuckey’s—oh, yeah, and that got me off on Mama and her quest for a clean public restroom.

  I’ll never forget when Mama and I went to Japan and Taiwan. Suffice it to say, Mama not only failed to find a clean public toilet over there—she failed to find a TOILET in most places. Them folks favor the ole hole in the ground over your porcelain throne. Talk about your excellent THIGH workout—after a month over there, I swear I could squat two hundred pounds! And if and when perchance you should happen upon an actual terlet, you will find that most of the natives prefer to STAND on the seat. I don’t know why that undid Mama so—since she was only gonna cover the entire thing with toilet paper and hover over it anyway, what difference did it make?—nonetheless, she did get evermore wound up over it, let me tell you. But I continue to digress—big surprise—let us return to the Tale of Stuckey’s.

  But first, could I just say a brief word about Porta Potties and how I would just about rather PIMP (isn’t it great that, thanks to text messaging on our cell phones, we now have an actual acronym for “peeing in my pants”—so much to thank technology for) than have to utilize one—preferring the storm to this particular port, but that’s just me. Anyway, Queen Lynne told me that she and her friend Queen Jules had attended some major fund-raising event—part indoor, part outdoor—for which they had regrettably worn cute outfits and complementary cute shoes as well, so it was that they found themselves fairly well impaled on those old dilemma horns—having to choose between walking, in their cute and correspondingly UN-comfy shoes, ALL that way back to the main building in order to stand in the lines for the inside cool and clean restrooms OR taking the few steps over to stand in the lines for the outside un-air-conditioned, far-from-sanitary portables. Tortured tootsies yelled the loudest and so the short hop to the hot-and-nasty won.

  There were two lines—one for the units marked “Ladies” and the other for those labeled “Either.” Now, for me, that begs the question—either or WHAT, exactly? Could be ladies or gentlemen—could be ladies or skanky-ass hos, though. At any rate, there were men and women (of varying demeanor) in the Either line, and they made, I think, the wise choice with that line on account of it just does not take guys very long to pee under any circumstances but the performance time for women is generally substantially increased by the fact that we are hampered by the close quarters and the fact that the stifling heat causes all our clothes to immediately become shrink-wrapped to our bodies, and our horror at our surroundings does little to expedite matters. So at least the men in the Either line offer some hope for a speedier queue.

  Sure enough, their gamble paid off and Queens Lynne and Jules quickly found themselves entering the two side-by-side Eithers. Lynne emerged from her sweatbox first and stood waiting and panting in the shade of Jules’s Either cubicle until presently, the door swung open and out came the sweaty but strangely ebullient Jules, exclaiming loudly that THAT was, by far and away, the NICEST Porta Potti she had ever had the pleasure of being forced by her throbbing feet to use after ten-thousand other people in the blazing sun.

  And what, Queen Lynne wondered aloud, could possibly rate such an effusion of enthusiasm regarding a sweltering, festering public loo? Well, gushed Jules, at least it had that handy little place to put my purse—it must have been designed by a woman; who else would realize how important it is to have a place to put your purse while you pee?

  Upon hearing this revelation, Queen Lynne spontaneously erupted with a true belly-grabbing, rolling-on-the-ground “bwahahahaha” that drew quite a curious crowd from the surrounding area. Jules, reigning Queen of Igmos, had, of course, placed her precious Prada purse—smack IN the URINAL of the Either potty. For years now, everyone (with the notable exception of Jules) has so enjoyed that story. Sorry to propagate it, Jules, but—well, naahh, not really—it’s too good NOT to. Surely, you’re over it by now? No? Oh, well.

  Okay—Now, I Swear—Back to Stuckey’s…Saw It, Had to Have It, Pitched a Fit, Got It—and It’s Never Enough

  When the Stuckey’s signs finally advised me that, in addition to an insulin coma and a nice potty, I could also avail myself of “SOUVENIRS!”—well, I was just about wild to get there.

  Fortunately for my parents’ fragile sanity, it was not necessary for me to ask that age-old question that reverberates endlessly within the confines of all moving automobiles containing children—and has since moving vehicles were invented—that being, “HOW MANY MORE MILES IS IT?” There was no need to verbalize that query since Mr. Stuckey himself was providing me with a mile-by-mile update on that situation. That service alone should have been enough to endear him to adult motorists everywhere—at least those whose children were old enough to read mile markers.

  My burning desire for sweets and souvenirs would not have been enough to persuade Daddy to veer off the path with much frequency—but Stuckey’s billboards promised “Clean Restrooms,” and that positively guaranteed that I was gonna get to stop at every single one of ’em as long as Mama was in the car. One sampling told me I was not going to become a lifelong fan of the Pecan Logs or the Divinity—but the Souvenirs were quite another matter.

  Many of y’all know of my fascination and fondness for all things Tacky, and it is a rare thing indeed to find so MANY genuinely tacky items handily assembled for one in such a convenient location, and then to find that location replicated over and over, every couple of hundred miles or so, is just beyond even the wildest dreams of Tacky Heaven. In one visit to one single Stuckey’s, you could buy—or at least lust after—a small wooden outhouse, complete with a patron inside who would turn around, look surprised, and pee on you when you opened the door; a ceramic ashtray shaped like a tiny toilet; a wooden paddle emblazoned with an amusing limerick sure to tickle the funny bone of even the dourest child-beating customer (what a sick slant THAT was on the whole “souvenir” concept): just about anything you can think of covered in tiny seashells (I still have a seashell-covered poodle that is rendered even more lovely by the shade of lavender it is painted); a can of “peanuts” that, when opened, would allow a giant snake made of springs covered in snake-print fabric to fly directly into one’s terrified face and would, upon further examination, be found to contain not even one single peanut, thereby compounding an already injurious situation with further insult; anything and everything from salt-and-pepper sets to ball caps depicting either The Lord’s Supper, a magnolia, and/or the outline of the state of Mississippi; and all manner of toothpick dispensers—both the passive kind that just sit there holding a wad of toothpicks as well as the active variety that somehow mechanically deliver a single pick into your waiting hand, which would allow one to begin picking one’s teeth at the earliest possible moment.

  Nabs and Geedunks

  On our summer trips with Daddy, though, Mama didn’t go along—it was just me and Rhonda and Daddy, and that was some slow-going, let me tell you. Rhon and I wanted to stop at EVERY Stuckey’s—in case this one had a larger stock of papiermâché clowns and genuine birthstone rings—but we didn’t like the nabs there, so other stops had to be made with w
hat Daddy considered to be alarming frequency.

  Okay, “nabs.” Once upon a time, Nabisco sold packs of peanut butter crackers and they were called Nabs. Nowadays, in the South—any pack of snack crackers is called nabs, and we all know what it means, but Outsiders mostly don’t. Okay, fine.

  When Yankee-boy Jeffrey Gross first met red-dirt Mississippi-boy Allen Payne, a discussion of lunch came up, during the course of which Allen allowed as how he was not in any big hurry to eat just then, having recently had “nabs,” and it was weeks before Jeffrey could bring himself to inquire as to what exactly a nab was and how come it to kill one’s appetite so completely. He was pretty relieved to learn that the truth was something edible and not contagious.

  Anyway, me and my seester, Judy, don’t actually care for snack crackers, nabs or otherwise, much at ALL, but we do like the name nabs, so we started calling ALL snacks and party food by that name. Actually, we call just about all food nabs. If we talk on the phone and I tell her I’m going to a gathering at Tammy’s house, the first thing Judy will ask is, “Will there be nabs?” Meaning, will there be food? When we used to travel together and we wanted to know where a good restaurant might be found, we would ask everybody we encountered, “Donde estan nabs?”—which was particularly confusing to them if we didn’t happen to be in, say, Cozumel or some other Hispanic locale—but even if they did speak Spanish, the nabs part would throw ’em. We got a lotta laughs out of it ourownselves, though, and that’s all we really care about. Clearly, we have not had ANY trouble finding the nabs, wherever we happen to find ourselves.

  So anyway, me and Rhon were not partial to the nabs available at Stuckey’s back then—it was all Pecan Logs!—and Divinity! It seemed to us there was only one production run of those products ever in the history of the world and we were pretty sure it was about the same time they made that one Claxton Fruit Cake. We wanted Sugar Babies and Milk Duds and Zero bars and Peanut Butter Logs and Chick-a-Sticks and Fritos and Co-Colas—and occasionally a MoonPie and a Big Orange drink.