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THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA

Perhaps the pea part of that headline was spelled wrong, as this article partially pertains to that part of physical relief dealing with liquids.  The public library in Lake Geneva, for many years, has served as the outdoor bathroom site for so many locals and visitors coming to hike, lounge around, or go to the beach in the summertime.  Those bathrooms, set onto the outside back wall (south), have played an inordinately important role in the public’s relief of watery tension over the years.

Why is the Lake Geneva Public Library not particularly people-friendly?  It’s closed on holidays and many weekend days when the public is freed up from work and other junk to come to the library and enjoy all of its mostly free benefits.  Why is the library not open when people are free and want to use it most?  Only the Shadow apparently knows.

The people inside working and running the library are great, and the GSR appreciates all that they do for our community. Now, the library wants to rid itself of the bathrooms.  There is talk of taking the American Legion’s small building, constructed on the tip of the eastern edge of the park, down near the beach entrance.  The small plot of land and building are under perpetual lease to the American Legion, and that lease is not breakable unless the Legion wants to surrender it.

For those of you who don’t know, the Legion is not about surrender in any form.  That the Legion has violated the terms of the lease many times over the years is true.  The old hot dog stand was not only not run by legionnaires (as is prescribed in the lease), but the former guys with little hot dogs even collected Legion contributions cash in marked cans and kept that money.  The Legion soldiered on, aware but doing nothing to stop the practice.

The current shave ice stand is also not operated by legionnaires.  The Legion soldiers on.  Who wants to mess with the Legion?  But what about the ‘princess and her pee?”  Where are people going to go to the bathroom, because they will.  Spirit Airlines once had a board meeting, and somebody there offered a new profit-making means of coin-operated the bathrooms on all of its planes.  It sounded almost as good as the legal theft of charging airline passengers for hauling their luggage…until a woman on the board asked this question: “So, since they have to go and there’s no legal or available place to go, where do you suppose they will go, since they can’t hold it forever?”

That caused a momentary silence in the boardroom until finally the board members got it.  The next question that followed was totally logical: “How much is the replacement of the passenger seats ?”  The answer was over seven hundred dollars, and the idea of coin-operated johns on airplanes died right there.

Now, come forward to the Library Park bathrooms.  When the author of this article was in college, he spent one summer working for Slater Foods, which owned the managerial rights to the restaurant that was there before Popeyes.  That was in the sixties.  He went home after closing at about one every morning.  People could be seen openly peeing in the park under the streetlights of the time.  The park was covered by yellow dead grass from the peeing there.  The practice was not only ugly but faintly disgusting as it was unhealthy and unsafe for the vegetation.  So, what was the solution?  The bathrooms were built onto the outside of the back of the library.

People are going to go, and if there’s no place to go, then they are going to find a place to go that’s very close. Having police patrols to catch people peeing in public, day or night, well, just how many Lake Geneva police officers are on probation to do that kind of awful work?  Unless a stream of urine is actually seen, and that’s hard to do at night, then the officer must get a sample of the wet spot to prove the case in court.  Which officers will be chosen or volunteer for that job?  Of course, the sample might not have to be taken if the officer were to do a smell or taste test on the scene. The judges of Walworth County would likely be willing to take the word of the officers doing those tests without having to do their own.  Do something, Lake Geneva leaders, and give us our bathrooms back.