Old-timers (and, let's face it, at age 63 I now qualify as such) will always tell you that things were "different" back in the old days – different meaning bigger, better, simpler, etc. Along those lines, I have to say that Main Street of Big Sandy, during the days of my youth (the late 1950s to mid-1970s) was a pretty interesting place, in ways that the modern version cannot quite live up to.
But before I go about making my point, let me quickly acknowledge a few ways in which "modern Main Street Big Sandy" has shown life in recent years: the Jeff Reichelt Library building and facility is a big plus. The site of the once-swarthy hippie redneck bar, The Branding Iron, is now the home of the Fireman's Park. The Big Sandy Pharmacy has had a facelift, and the old Odd Fellows Hall has been purchased and retooled by members of the Myers family who have brought new business interests to Main Street.
There are a few other bright spots that have cropped up. So Big Sandy still finds a way to have local and community character (let's not forget the recent prominence of Puddle, Main Street's charismatic and unusual new landmark). These features add new sources of pride to the core of the community, even in the wake of the closing of the iconic Wells Fargo bank, a structure that is truly the nose on the face of Big Sandy these days.
Still, us "old guys and gals" must be forgiven when we wax nostalgic over the "vintage Main Street" of the 1960s era: the old Rexall Drug, the "Big Store" which also housed Kaste's Department store and Smith Grocery, Art and Betty's dry cleaners, Sonksen Hardware, Courtnage and Sons, the Market Basket (another grocery), Ament's barbershop (one of the few places in town where I could read the latest issue of Fantastic Four comics without having to buy it), several bars, Vet's Club restaurant and so on and so forth. Parts of Big Sandy's past will remain with us older folk as recollections of great fondness.
Also, there are other aspects that we will remember in different ways -- other parts which will be remembered with a combination of fascination, confusion, and terror.
I loved the Grand Theater, where I took in a movie most weekends during the 1960s. With a bunch of my Beaudette cousins, we would bottleneck the front corner rows, gulping grape Sno-cones, assaulting our teeth with candy-like Big Hunk or Sugar Daddy, smearing our lips black with the residue of Nibs. Nothing cost more than a quarter, and most of the goodies were nickels and dimes. But if you downed a couple of soft drinks, sooner or later you were going to have to use the little boys' room. And that was where it got weird.
Two places that I knew of on Main Street had a very, shall we say, unfriendly plumbing system. One was the Grand, the other was Oliver's Self Service grocery, down from the Mint. The toilets in these two establishments were beyond description. I truly wish I had a picture to accompany this article. They had none of the niceties of contemporary 1960s plumbing. Made of solid iron, bowls encrusted in rust, they rose straight out of the floor with a direct and unimpeded shot into the bowels of the earth.
They had an automatic flush mechanism which seemed disturbingly random. You never knew when it was going to go off like a hand grenade; and honestly, it was extraneous. Anything the size of a child's shoe, a baseball, a beer can or smaller, would disappear immediately into the abyss if dropped in. In winter you could lose a mitten or a stocking cap in the blink of an eye. Drop your eyeglasses? Too bad.
The notion of sitting on that thing, never knowing when it might flush with the force of a freight train, was unnerving, to say the least. I imagined being stuck to the bowl by the vacuum pressure – or, worse yet, being sucked down; young bones crushed, flesh compressed, destroyed and disappeared. Your friends or parents would never know what had happened. "Beats me where he went; last I heard he was going to use the restroom."
I knew one of the delivery boys at Oliver's grocery who often would sneak a can of pop in the back room, slug it down, then just drop the can down the toilet pipe. No muss, no fuss, no evidence left behind.
I will never forget the time that my cousin John Beaudette got up during the movie to use the facilities. We were down in front as usual, over in the corner, soaking up the Beach Blanket Bingo or whatever the second-run feature of the week was offering. In a bit, John returned from the john, and he was visibly shaken.
I whispered to him: "John, what's wrong, what happened?" He tried for several minutes before he was able to give an answer. "John Kuest," he said, his voice trembling slightly. "He – he – he tipped over the toilet!" I tried to picture how this would even be possible. "He didn't mean to, but somehow he picked it up, and the pipe came out of the hole in the floor. There was water shooting everywhere!"
Frankie and Annette, pretending to surf in front of some prerecorded beachfront footage replayed in a Hollywood studio, were long forgotten. I was riveted to this unimaginable circumstance. "Then what?" I almost shouted. Some bigger kids two rows back were shushing us. "What did you do?" I demanded.
John wore a sobering expression as he looked me in the eye. "Well, I ran," he said simply. "I ran for the door."
The Grand died a gruesome death in 1969 after an exploding boiler put an end to motion pictures in Big Sandy. I don't know exactly when Oliver's grocery moved across the street to become what is now Big Sandy's only grocery store, but I think it was the mid 70's. The old Oliver's building was eventually remodeled.
The fact is, I don't know where those demonic toilets came from, and I have no idea where they went. All I know is, the people of Big Sandy, especially the youth, are better off without them. And I have to believe the like of those things will never be seen again.
Unless, deep in the back of one of the other long-forgotten Main Street buildings, something sinister, something sewer-related lurks. There could be one of those toilets still out there, waiting, waiting for the right time. The perfect opportunity is waiting for just the wrong person to open just the wrong, long-forgotten backroom door. Perhaps the day is yet to come when the rusty, crusty visage of the Main Street Toilet of Terror shall rise from the ashes, and live again.
