Possum Philosophy: The runaway privy, a true tale

By ROBERT “ROCKY” CAHILL/Columnist

If this were a Sherlock Homes novel, it would likely be titled the “Attack of the Runaway Privy,” or perhaps “The Outhouse’s Revenge.” Possibly even, “The Case of the Loo on the Lam.” However, I think I will simply call it “Only in Virginia’s Southern Highlands.” The story goes like this…
It was a dark and stormy night (actually it was an average workday in the town of Saltville). It seems this past week, Saltville Town Manager Michael Taylor was reviewing municipal bills for accuracy when he came across one that puzzled him. It was a monthly bill for a portable toilet. On further review, Taylor saw the account had received monthly bills running throughout last winter. While the town occasionally rents these units when expecting large crowds for special events, it does not normally keep them year round. Since he had no idea where the toilet in question was, if indeed it was in town, Taylor called the rental firm.
As it turned out, the town had rented the moveable johnny-house and never contacted the rental company to return it. It was stored at the town’s Salt Park behind some of the recreated historic buildings at the back edge of the property and had been apparently been overgrown by weeds, so much so that it was almost completely hidden.
As fate would have it, Taylor had been considering renting a portable toilet to place along the Salt Trail as summer weather and downtown events have produced a growing number of users for the trail. Although the town now has public toilets in the downtown area, Taylor believed a portable one placed on the trail somewhere near the Salt Park would be convenient. Since the account was already active and the john was fairly close to where Taylor wanted to place one, he decided to have the town crew relocate the blue loo.
The town crew jumped on the task. A staff member took off with the town’s forklift. Two more employees accompanied him in a town truck to the site where the portable potty had spent the winter, hidden in the weeds. The relocation project started off propitiously enough. The guys located the toilet and were, as far as I can tell, able to get it loaded on the forks of the forklift with relative ease. That part of the mission accomplished, the “Great Outhouse Migration” began. The crew headed for the soon-to-have-a-new-toilet site.
Things went well enough for government work, at least at first. As it was a relatively short trip, it did not take long, even allowing for the slower speed of the forklift lumbering along balancing the burdensome toilet as it was. Finally, the cumbersome convoy reached the spot designated for the placement of the portable pot. The fellows in the truck parked, awaiting arrival of the john. They looked back, seeing their fellow employee herding the outdoor privy down the old dusty trail.
Now here is where the details grow a bit murky. Perhaps the forklift operator could not see around the loaded toilet. Perhaps the truck stopped a bit sooner than the forklift driver expected, or the forklift was moving slightly faster than it appeared to the guys in the truck. For that matter, maybe neither, maybe everything was transpiring just as planned, up to a point. Either way, the employees in the vehicle rolled out of the truck to signal to the operator that they had arrived. Just as they reached the back of the truck, the forklift driver presumably proceeded to stop. And it appears that it was a rather quick stop at that, perhaps by necessity, perhaps by accident.
The employees behind the truck looked up and realized the forklift had indeed stopped. What they didn’t realize, until just a tad too late, was that while they had stopped and the forklift had stopped, the portable toilet had, unfortunately, not stopped. In fact, it had sailed off the forks of the lift and was approaching them rather rapidly. So rapidly that it took them by surprise, bumping them both. Thank goodness it only bumped them, and they were bumped out of the way.
Once the terrible toilet had brushed the two fellows out of its way, it sailed merrily along smacking directly into the back of the town pickup. This impact was rather hard. So hard in fact, it did leave a dent in the truck’s rear bumper, while somehow phenomenally not damaging the tailgate.
According to unnamed sources, the portable john had very little contents. Only a tiny amount sloshed about. I am sure no one was happier about this than the two employees brushed aside by the flying-fortress-of-fecal-fallout.
I can only imagine the horror in their eyes. After all, they were facing what they no doubt considered sure death, though perhaps not sure what the cause would be: death from the high-speed impact or drowning in the well-ripened, months-old contents of a portable public toilet. I can’t say what went through these guy’s minds, but as for me, I would most definitely prefer a quick death from high impact over a slow, torturous death by drowning in porta-potty-poop. In fact, I think I would prefer almost any other form of demise, even public stoning.
Now comes the truly funny part. In order for the town’s insurance to pay for the damage, the employees had to file an accident report with the police department. These reports call for an accurate account of the incident given in great detail.
Can you imagine some insurance claims adjuster, sitting at his desk, going over that report, “Town truck damaged when run-away portable toilet knocked down two town employees, then proceeded onward, smashing into a town-owned pickup.” It would be my guess that the most serious injury related to the escape of the porta-john will occur when the insurance adjuster pulls a muscle or cracks a rib from laughing. This event may well go down in the annals of unusual insurance claims history.
As one of the employees (who shall remain nameless) put it, “I worked at [his former employer] for some 17 years and never had a single accident on the job. Now I’ve been here about six months and I have already been run over by a [expletive deleted] house.”
Where else in the world would two municipal employees suffer minor injuries and a town vehicle be damaged by a portable toilet on a rampage? Like I said earlier, only here in the Southern Highlands.

A freelance journalist, Robert “Rocky” Cahill writes regularly for the News & Messenger. His Possum Philosophy column appears in each Saturday edition.