The Great Honey Bucket Calamity
It might be said that family stories, retold from year to year, suffer some degree of exaggeration. It may also be true that the funnier tales involve some unfortunate “fall guy” who, through no fault of his own, has provided entertainment for the ages. Though this story needs no embellishment, it is understandably not one of my Cousin Rogers’ favorites.
Summers can be a bit boring during the school break, but when we were growing up, we always had our annual “family” camping trip to look forward to. Each year we escaped the city routine and headed for
Our new 2 bedroom cabin was under construction and had no running water or adjoining “out house”. We did have a new roof over our heads, but the internal walls were only roughed in. For privacy, cardboard was tacked to these unfinished partitions. In the corner of the cabin, a small rectangular box with a toilet seat served as our commode. Each of us had a specific chore in order to maintain some order with 18 people sharing the same space.
One of the less attractive of these chores was the honey bucket detail. By way of refresher for the city folk, the honey bucket is any bucket, pan, or container that can be used as a receiver for the commode. Ours was an empty 5 gallon paint pail that never seemed to be empty. Only one bucket would fit in our commode, and it needed to be emptied twice a day and “freshened” with a bit of Pinesol after the emptying.
Typically, a suitable hole is dug near the cabin and the bucket is emptied each morning and evening. A few shovels full of dirt are placed on top to maintain civility. One year, the detail was assigned to my brother, John Custer, and my Cousin, Roger Nielsen. Neither was thrilled, but one could make the best of things by emptying the morning bucket. For some reason it was never as full in the morning as it was later in the afternoon.
On the day in question, Roger was up early and wanted to beat John to the bucket. In a hurry, as John was beginning to stir in his bed, Roger made a dash out of the cabin with bucket in hand. Unfortunately, the front door was not at ground level and several steps had to be negotiated. In his haste, Roger slipped on one of these and tumbled head over heel. Somewhere in mid-flight, he lost the bucket and dumped its toxic contents all over himself, the porch and the front of the cabin. Toilet paper hung from the railing like tinsel set out for Christmas.
Other than his embarrassment and self inflicted mess, Roger appeared to be fine. My brother John got to the porch in time to witness the carnage and laughed load enough to wake the rest of the house. Aunt Erma simply explained that Roger fell down the stairs but said nothing of the drama unfolding. It was terrible!
Some controversy still exists today regarding the bucket detail. “Was Roger trying to help John by carrying out both morning and evening buckets? Or, was he trying to get by with the lighter load?” We may never know the truth, but my brother John still laughs heartily at this one. Roger, though, remains quiet during the retelling.