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If you ranked all 50 states according to General
availability of public restrooms,
it's safe to bet that
Colorado would come in dead last.
Even our governor has become aware of this problem. Sunday morning, he was strolling through Civic Center Park after his morning coffee. One by-product of morning coffee is the urgent need to find a restroom.
Gov. Romer didn't see anything open, so he inquired of the park's residents. They explained that Civic Center's restrooms and the RTD station's restrooms were closed over the weekend. The governor eventually found what he needed at McDonald's.
This problem isn't confined to Denver; finding a restroom can be difficult just about anywhere in Colorado. You might think that a state which wants to promote tourism and travel would try to make life comfortable for those passing through.
But other states have many roadside rest areas at convenient intervals. Colorado has but a few, and they're oddly spaced. You can go hundreds of miles without seeing one, and then, along I-70 in Eagle County, there will be two within 20 miles of each other.
Certainly there are private facilities at gas stations, convenience stores and the like. But you're never quite sure what you'll find.
You can pull in and fill your tank. But then the clerk
will tell you that Our restrooms are out of order.
I
often wonder what that clerk does when the need arises, but
I've never bothered to ask.
Or you'll hear that For insurance reasons, only
employees can use the restroom here.
These days,
insurance companies are like Satan during the Middle Ages
or Communists during the McCarthy era -- the safe thing to
blame everything on.
Your tank is full, and so are you -- alas. You go down
the street, hoping to find a restroom. The sign says
Restrooms for customers only.
You pull out some
change, and learn that buying a little bag of Fritos is not
enough to qualify you as a customer.
The problem isn't quite so severe for males traveling in the mountains; when all else fails, it's generally easy to pull over and step into the trees. More and more, I notice that a lot of men don't even bother to step into the trees. Some women I know have almost gotten into accidents because their eyes left the road when they passed a standing man.
But for women and children on the road, it can be tough
to answer nature's call. When we moved to Salida 10 years
ago, we had two little girls in various stages of toilet
training. Conversations with other parents of toddlers
always turned to any locations you might have discovered
between here and Denver: There aren't any trees in South
Park, but the restrooms are usually open at the A-frame gas
station in Fairplay.
Just this side of Grant, you'll
find a tolerable privy by the east portal of the Roberts
Tunnel.
A few miles past Conifer, there's a
pullover, right into a good spot where you're surrounded by
trees. Don't try it during tick season, though.
My mother still blushes when we recall a Sunday drive to
the mountains. She needed an outhouse, and we saw a narrow
little building. She raced over there. The door had a sign:
It ain't either.
The sign was correct; there was a
pump inside.
Looking for a restroom in the city can be just as frustrating, as the governor has pointed out. It was at the edge of Civic Center park, in fact, that the problem became apparent to me a few years ago.
As darkness fell one autumn evening, I was standing with several dozen other people at the corner of Broadway and Colfax. We were waiting for the No. 15 bus to arrive and haul us up Capitol Hill. Three young black men were passing around a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag.
The tallest of them was hopping from foot to foot and
looking around furiously. Finally, he started toward the
bushes. Before he left, though, he turned to the small
crowd and announced, Don't let me be hearing any of you
telling nobody about this. This be the kind of stuff that
gives niggers a bad name.
I hate to break a confidence. But he's not the one that gave anybody a bad name. It's Colorado that gets a bad name when it's impossible to find a restroom.
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