SOS Gab & Eti 1.4

Gab and Eti were contacted by a highly agitated state historian who was
concerned that they were usurping the levity of his life's study and making
fun of the otherwise serious and pedantic. Dr. A. P. Eldunker, Ph.D., made
them painfully aware of the very unique history of infamous outhouse fires.

Curiously, Dr. Eldunker has made a thorough scientific study of smelly things
that burn in the night. He has read over 40,703 original documents, while
sitting in environmentally conditioned research latrines, and interviewed no
less than 2,567 individual experts (that’s a lot of ants, termites and milk
snakes), many of them on difficult-to-locate videotape (including 24 hours of
the Empire State Outhouse, on behalf of the Warhol Society). Search word
“coffee”.

Dr. Eldunker stated that though his cogitation is meticulous and unregulated
he could not at this time release any significant findings for fear of his
theories being usurped by the thought police who have been staking out his
penthouse behind the barn with their black helicopters, and therefore
jeopardizing his employment and pension. Once again we are faced with the
problems of limited access to information in an important area of historic
preservation that I’m sure all of us really care a lot to hear about.

Alphonse did reveal that Nero was playing more than a fiddler's tune, and
that it was not for want of milking a cow's udder that Chicago burnt. It
seems that, as Alphonse phrases it, the modern engineering of water pollution
control plants (a cleaner term for sewage facilities) stemmed from an
original impetus to preserve the built environment from the hazard of being
torn down and/or pissed on by flaming developers. Which reminds us of
Gulliver’s wine-induced fire watch, an heroic attempt to save an admirable
structure, and gives us a thought to seek out Swift’s comments on privies.

To be continued..... forget about the bus.

Copyright 1997 Ken Follett
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