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A-K Life
Alan R. and Kathy M. Henderson
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"Honey Pots" or "Stuck in the Outhouse Story"

Copyright Alan R. Henderson June 9, 2005 (minor revisions October 1, 2012)

One Friday evening in November 1980, I drove out to see my friend Gary Guinn for a long weekend. It is around 250 miles from Anchorage to Chitina, Alaska. Gary was renting a really neat A-Frame log cabin out in the middle of nowhere, near Chitina. Of course it was dark when I left Anchorage after work and was even darker when I got to Gary's. This was my first time in the "bush" and when I stopped in the middle of nowhere, to take a quick pee, I was totally thunderstruck at the clarity and quantity of stars in the sky. This was also the first time I had really seen the northern lights. It was truly amazing. Since I hadn't been to Gary's before I had a hard time finding the place. I finally got to Gary's around 1:00 am, with everyone sound asleep. I had to pee again and noticed an outhouse. It was amazing that, even without a moon, I could still see really well from the star-light. It took me a few minutes to figure out that there was a 4" thick block of Styrofoam glued outhouse as a seat. I finally did my business, got my bag and went into the house. With all the lights off, I headed into what I assumed was the back door. This was a small lean-to room off the back of the house that I entered. I had just got in the door (quietly) when I tripped over a 5-gallon honey bucket that was 1/2 full. If you've never lived in the country, this is your classic "pot to pee-in". Of course this created a huge mess. I spent a couple of hours getting the mess up before I finally got to bed. The next day the temperature dropped to 50 degrees below zero. I had been using the honey pot during the day, but late that night I had to do a little more than pee. I had never tried using a honey pot for that, so I decided to go to the outhouse. I had to get dressed (coat, hat and all) and then run to the outhouse. I pulled my pants and underwear down and thought twice about if I really needed to do this. I decided I'd better get it over with. Unbeknownst to me, someone had pee'd all over the Styrofoam seat. After what seemed like forever, I finally finished. I started to get up and found that I was stuck to the seat. It was late and everyone was sound asleep, so help was out of the question. It is like sticking your tongue to a flag pole. It took me 15 minutes to break away enough of the seat and get clean up. I couldn't get all the Styrofoam off, so I had to run into the house with my pants down. COLD!!!! It took another 30 minutes by the wood stove for the foam to warm up enough to fall off. Luckily no one was around to see me with my pants down trying to warm up my butt!!!

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Notes -
Text in italics is sidebar information about Alaska and Alan's adventures.