New England: Land of the Tiny Toilets

You’ve heard me say that New England and Connecticut have been good to us: a good job for my husband, good schools, good friends, good churches.  And of course fall colors can’t be beat.  Have you ever heard of the Burning Bush shrub?  It’s a roundish type plant, often 4-8’ diameter, and it turns the deepest, richest red; it really pops. What makes me love it so?  In Charlotte’s Web, there is a scene at the very beginning where the author describes autumn and the coming winter. He says something like, “And the bush down by the pond flushed bright red with anxiety.” I like to think that’s a Burning Bush.

The first few years we were here, the girls expressed grave concern because as I drove around town, I’d drive with one hand on the wheel and take pictures of fall colors with the other.  Very unsafe.

Of course New England is picturesque in other ways:  so many quaint Main Streets and Town Greens, charming store fronts, lots of homemade ice cream shops (with milk from their own cows), working farms where you can gather eggs and feed the chickens, and white steepled churches.  This all makes New England so charming.  It’s a great show. And a little mind-boggling that so much charm can be squeezed into one place.

Another feature is this:  the donuts. Dunkin’ is everywhere, and there are still a bunch of independent donut shops as well.  Except for one neighborhood in Rhode Island, Boston has the highest density of donut shops in the entire country.  I read an article a while back in which a man was looking for an apartment in downtown Boston; his non-negotiable requirement?  There must be a Dunkin’ within a block in each direction. He got it!

But there are a few things you don’t think about, for example the toilets.  By the early 20^th century indoor plumbing was becoming more common, although I’m sure some of the more rural areas weren’t quite up to speed. 

My husband grew up in Oklahoma.  One day his dad came home and informed his mom that he had bought a farm; they hadn’t discussed this - it was simply his manly decision and he acted upon it.  His mom said, “Okay, let me take a look.”  He drives her out of town to the farm and house; this was in the early 1960s. It had neither bathrooms nor a working kitchen – just a wood stove, a well, and an outhouse.  Her response was, “I’m not moving out there until I have a full bathroom and real kitchen.” So his dad built them and they moved. Eventually they built a better house. But I have to imagine that some villages and homes in New England were equally late in getting those amenities that we considered standard in places like Southern California.

My firm belief is that when people in New England finally put in toilets, they were short and had small seats (both the people and the toilets), and they haven’t upgraded them since.  I swear to you, I have used kindergarten toilets with greater height and larger seats! Many are still light blue and other colors. Plus, Yankees are just cheap.  I think they figure that the short, squat small-seated toilet was good enough for the last 75 years, so there is no reason to buy a modern, adult-sized toilet if it needs replacing. They go to Home Depot and buy the smallest, cheapest toilet available.  Seriously, any mom-and-pop restaurant, snack stand, gas station, store or rental has these stupid tiny toilets. All the Airbnbs certainly do. 

Recently my husband (6’6”) and I (5’9”) spent five days in a lovely rental on Cape Cod.  This place had picture windows that looked out over the most lovely pond/lake; perfect reflections in the water and, even with the lights out at night, the moonlight provided a gorgeous scene.  Literally, there were three windows that covered at least 30’ and went virtually floor to ceiling.  It had a brand new kitchen, beautiful gas stove, granite, a genuinely comfortable bed and high-end linens, plus the TV was way better than ours at home.  The bathroom was appointed with a lovely circular shower and again, a granite sink and cabinets that were very stylish.  But the toilet, although new, was tiny. Why on earth would you splurge on everything else and put in a toilet that is only fit for eight-year-olds?  I have a bad knee – it's like I’m squatting on the floor.

Our church also has old small toilets; what makes it even worse is that the stalls are tiny too.  Think about it – you sit through a long sermon, prayers, etc., then then you have to do a deep squat in a limited space and somehow get back up again. Plus there are a couple where the water tank is always running; we have plenty of water here, but in California this would be an unforgivable sin. I’ve seriously considered donating money in directed giving to get at least one decent toilet. 

Whenever we travel in New England, we are always stopping at corporately owned places to use an adult-sized toilet – fast food chains, national gas stations, CVS and the like.  This is all just a very inconvenient and uncomfortable quirk of New England, and there is nothing to be done about it.  It’s like your husband: you can’t change it, so don’t even try.

But while we are talking about being stuck in your old ways, we must discuss provincialism.  This one makes me nuts too.

I realize that upper New England may not be as worldly as say, New York; but Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut have no excuse for not embracing a broader world view.  And yet, here we are.

For decades, the coasts have considered the middle of the county, except Chicago, to be the fly-over areas; they would never want to go there – they just fly over the whole Midwest and South until they get to the better, more sophisticated cities on the coasts, although the West Coast is still second best to them.  This of course is deeply insulting and terribly ignorant, particularly considering that the coast-ers are eating the food and using all the goods that are produced in the middle of the country.  But they all consider themselves very sophisticated.

I have a friend who, after college, visited Nebraska for a wedding; she was truly shocked to find that they had paved streets and things like a symphony and opera company.  She truly thought they still drove cattle through the middle of town. In Omaha.

However, from what I’ve seen, people in the middle of the country fully realize that there is a bigger world out there.  They know that money and power lie on the coasts, and that there are places they haven’t seen and may never see, but they are happy, educated and productive people with sophisticated world views.  The important thing here is that they realize that they are one part of a great big country, and that all of it is good and interesting and valuable.   

What I’ve found in the East is that people are very provincial.  They think that the East Coast and New England are the end-all and be-all, and that the sun rises and sets only over themselves. You ever notice how all the news outlets are in New York City and every time there is a snow storm, they act like all hell is breaking loose?  It’s a few inches to a foot, whereas Minnesota and the Great Lakes get that kind of snow practically every day. It’s not unusual.

I had a friend whose husband worked for a multinational corporation, and they considered moving his job to California.  Her response? “We were so scared!” Really?  Scared of what?  Sunshine and surfing?  Skiing on powder instead of ice?

There are also so many people here who revere and almost worship the Ivy Leagues.  It’s all about the Ivy League pedigree. I’m really quite done with it.  The Ivy Leagues do get you the connections to power, but the education is never going to blow my socks off.  At any university, you get out out it what you put into it.  You can get a fine education just about anywhere in the country.

I was listening to a story on NPR a number of years back, and they were talking about the value of an Ivy League education.  They had someone from a prestigious firm – investment banking or something like that.  She said they only hire Harvard MBAs  - if you don’t have one, don’t even apply.  I thought that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard.  Why on earth would you want your company to be full of people who all had the exact same education, culture, experiences, ideas and self-congratulatory egos of conceited Harvard MBAs? 

What you should do is cherry-pick the best MBAs from all over the country: University of Chicago, Rice, UCLA, Stanford, and so many more. Even other Ivy Leagues.  You want to glean a variety of ideas and experiences and mix it all up to get some outside-the-box thinking.  Try something new.  Apparently, they can’t tolerate the thought of anything except their provincial herd mentality. This is where companies get into trouble – when they all think alike.

Have you ever heard the story of how Stanford University got started?  Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford had a lot of money, which they made in railroads.  They way you get rich building railroads is you bribe the government surveyors to report that you are building railroads over and through mountains, across gorges and rivers, and through the very worst territory, when in fact you are laying them down straight across the flat dessert; thus the government pays you the big bucks and you get to pocket all that excess.  That was how Leland Stanford got rich. 

The Stanfords had one son and, now that they were rich, they sent him on a Grand European Tour as a young man, like all the rich Easterners did.  Well, sadly, he got sick and died on the trip, and his parents were devastated.  They decided they wanted to do something as a memorial to honor dear Leland Stanford, Jr., and decided something educational would be best.  They made an appointment with the President of Harvard, sat in his office, and told him they would like to donate a building.  He laughed at them.  He said, “Oh no, you can’t possibly donate a building.  Those are too expensive and it takes committees and years and you couldn’t possibly.  Why don’t you fund a Chair?  Or a scholarship?”  Then the Lelands asked how much a building would cost, and he gave an answer.  Then they asked how much a whole university would cost, and he gave an answer.  They politely thanked him and left and went back to California and funded and built Stanford.

The lesson here is that the East is so self-absorbed and so convinced they are the best of everything, that they couldn’t possibly imagine the wealth and size and muscle in the West.  And they still can’t. The world is so much bigger and so much more vigorous than they know. But they are focused on their own bellybuttons.

My theory is this:  when people left Europe and came to America, they had nothing to lose and everything to gain.  It took courage and just enough money to make the trip, and so the East was settled. But then the West opened up, and the Gold Rush.  Who headed west? Those who had courage and nothing to lose and just enough money to get there.  Who was left in the East?  The Establishment and those who had a reason to stay:  maybe they wanted to stay close to families and communities and ethnic groups, or some just lacked the ability or vision to go make a better life. Like my friend who was scared to move to California. Obviously these are generalizations and there are many fine and wonderful people here, but this is also a prevailing attitude.

Coming from California, I have a very different perspective of what local means. Frequently I meet someone new and ask if they are local.  Nine times out of ten, then say, “Oh, no.  I’m from XYZ town.”  XYZ town might be twenty minutes away, or maybe even thirty minutes, but they are speaking as if they are from Mongolia.  Connecticut is such a small state that anywhere within the state is local, as is most of New England. It’s easy to make a wrong turn and five minutes later find yourself in Massachusetts, New York or Rhode Island. In the west, local means 100 miles or the whole state, not a few miles.

When my daughter was in the third grade, we had a snow day where the snow had already stopped, but school was going to be cancelled while they plowed and cleaned up, while the freeways were already clear. I decided to take the girls up to the Boston Children’s Museum to get out of the house and do something fun, just a two-hour drive, and we invited another little girl to come along. As we made plans, the dad said, “I’d love for her to go! It’s such a great opportunity!” This struck me as odd.  This wasn’t an opportunity like climbing Kilimanjaro or taking a class at the Sorbonne; this was simply an outing in another city.  Kind of like driving into LA from Orange Country – no big deal.  And yet he classified it as an opportunity. I guess they never took day-trips to Boston.

There are people who have lived in the same house for generations, and don’t seem to get outside of their town.  My daughter was in a choir that took a trip to New York City.  We’ve been there a number of times.  We’ll catch a show, go to the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, go to the Met Museum, wander around Central Park, take in a concert, shop in Chinatown and eat in Little Italy.  All great fun.  But there were kids who were in high school and had never been to New York.  Their entire life experience was Connecticut and Florida (for Disney). They considered New York intimidating and one girl’s mother made her pin her purse to her sleeve – a very bad idea on so many levels. New York has aggressively unsafe drivers, but I’ve never had a bad encounter with a person or business in New York. I’ve never felt unsafe. It’s a two-hour drive and the traffic can be fast and heavy, but once you get there, it’s just a city with a lot to do.  BTW, the Bronx Zoo and Coney Island are also great day trips.

So New England, and Connecticut in particular, boggle my mind.  Fall colors and the spring blooms boggle my mind in their vibrancy and beauty.  But the small toilets and provincialism boggle my mind as well.  I should probably admit that growing up my family had a real sense of adventure, and I’m probably being too hard on New Englanders.  When we moved here twenty years ago, we didn’t know if we’d be here a few years or stay until retirement; we always knew we’d retire somewhere else, so we wanted to see and do everything here before we left. 

My intent is not to insult people, although I’m sure I have. There are just very real differences in different parts of the country, and I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. I will always be a California girl and I will always love the West. It just seems like New England is a very small, stifling box; I’m more of a dumpster fire kind of girl.