In 1954 I attended the Boy Scout Jamboree at Irvine Ranch, California. My troop camped next to what became Jamboree Road.

We took the train down there, a long, slow ride. At times it would get up to speed and kids loved to gather on the observation platform of the last car.

It didn't take long for us to figure out that if we flushed 4 toilets in sync they'd get sprayed, which we did over and over and over.

"They" came through and locked the toilets in towns so that we couldn't contribute to the local ambiance.

Several years later I lived in a town of 20,000 people with a creek running through the middle of downtown. In the summer at low water the town reeked to high heaven, as they dumped raw sewage into it. Not some of the sewage, not the overflow, but all of it.

That was the mid-'50s. We've come a long way.

Arf