Blowing Up Outhouses

Readers wonder: what’s that; say again, blowing up WHAT?

Okay, here are the bullet points:

Vandals drink beer and need to pee; often leading them to discover an outhouse in a remote park or recreation area.  After relieving themselves they sometimes decide that the formerly convenient facility should be converted to a suitable target for expressing an alcohol-twisted political or social aspiration to disparage, challenge or take revenge upon society.

Let’s get down and punk government for making war, trashing the environment and, worst of all, furnishing offensive outhouses in parks and recreation areas.

This is big: I can hear Iran’s Ahmedinejad (what type of Cialis does he overdose on?) calling a meeting of allies and advisors:

1. How many outhouses are there in America?
2. Why should Americans be comfortable using them?
3. I am tired of Chile and Haiti having the earthquakes; I want Americans to shake and quiver too, including, and especially, in their outhouses.

Anyway, over the years people have vandalized assorted public facilities, so private sector suppliers keep inventing products which resist vandalism.  This is why you see prefabricated concrete outhouses weighing several tons riding on big flatbed trucks to their remote destinations.

So, come-on, fess up, when you see that gravel-studded multi-ton outhouse go by you on a big flatbed truck on I-90 , don’t you have the overwhelming wacko destructive urge to follow that truck and blow up that outhouse?

Well, excuse me, but:  “No, I Don’t.”    But apparently, some people do, to the point of making massive preparations for the destruction.  Last summer a fellow packed up his welding equipment, several balloons, four fire extinguishers, a bunch of Molotov cocktails and a high powered rifle and set forth to immolate an outhouse right here in Wyoming.  (Footnote:  apparently, per Google search for “Blowing Up Outhouses”, this happens a lot in Idaho.)

Said outhouse was installed by the federal government to accommodate public users of public lands north of Gillette at a place called Weston.  People camp, hunt, ride four-wheelers and enjoy the outdoors there, to the point that the public lands are getting badly trashed, but that’s another story.  The outhouse is one of those heavy concrete structures on a concrete slab with heavy metal doors.

The adventurous malfeasant first stuffed his target full of balloons inflated with oxygen and acetylene and detonated them.  Astonishingly, he did this without killing himself.  This effort succeeded only in blowing the door off its hinges.  Not satisfied, the arsonist placed the fire extinguishers inside the structure and exploded them from a distance with his high-powered rifle.  This made a mess, but the structure still stood.  Last, he threw in all of the Molotov cocktails and ignited the mess.  The resulting explosion separated the concrete walls at their corner joints, but the roof stayed up.  The moronic nitwit, having exhausted his arsenal, thereupon retired, uninjured, from the field.

Conveniently for local prosecutors, his companion videotaped the entire adventure.