real—and in West Virginia, no less, not far from my old Morgantown stomping grounds. On July 13, 2004, John Jenkins, a fifty-three-year-old employee of North West Fuels Development in Blacksville, eased himself down on the seat of a portable toilet. Ah, nothing like a respite from the toils and cares of the day. He put a cigarette between his lips and pulled out his trusty Zippo. “When I struck the lighter,” Jenkins later told the Associated Press, “the whole thing just detonated—the whole top blew off. I can’t tell you if it blew me out the door or if I jumped out.”
The flame had ignited methane gas leaking from a pipeline beneath the toilet that had been damaged by heavy equipment running over it.
Jenkins sued everybody—including the contractor that operated the heavy equipment and the coal company that owned the property—for $10 million. He had spent over a week at the burn unit of Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, getting skin graftson his forearms. But perhaps the greatest injury was to his pride when the Associated Press beamed the story around the world: “Man Injured in Toilet Blast Files Suit!”
I’m not privy to all the facts, but the respondents have so far refrained from suggesting to the court that maybe the plaintiff just happened to let one hell of a fart.
What makes Mr. Jenkins’s story even more fantastic than it seems is that the exploding toilet has been a running joke for many years now, as well as an urban legend. Normally these shithouse shenanigans feature a wife throwing or spritzing a flammable liquid into the toilet, followed by the unsuspecting husband sitting down, lighting a cigarette, and creating a pyrotechnic finale that’s detrimental to the health of his butt cheeks. According to the urban myth debunkers at the San Fernando Valley Folklore Society ( http://snopes.com ), the liquid can be paint thinner (toxic waste disposal), pesticide (to kill a scary bug), a powerful cleaning solvent (gasoline or worse), hairspray, or cheap perfume, just as long as it’s highly combustible. The writers of the NBC television series
L.A. Law
even recycled the joke into an episode called “Smoke Gets in Your Thighs,” which aired originally on November 15, 1990. Douglas Brackman (Alan Rachins), head of the show’s law firm, went to the men’s room right after someone had painted the walls and dumped the used turpentine into the toilet. Brackman sat down and lit a cigarette, and explosive drama ensued.
Dr. Jan Harold Brunvand, a folklorist who’s written several books on urban legends, as well as the introduction for a children’s book by Catherine Daly-Weir called
The Exploding Toilet: Tales Too Funny to Be True
, says the story was originally a rural gag about outhouses before indoor plumbing came along, and even then the victim was usually a husband or grandfather who sat down on the wooden oval, gazed contentedly out the small half-moon window in the door, and lit his corncob pipe, not realizing that one of the womenfolk had just finished cleaning the walls with some old gasoline and then dumped the remainder down the hole.
The joke was in fact enshrined by poet Robert Service, the Scottish roustabout who chronicled the American West. In “The Three Bares” (1949), he wrote that Ma disposed of some used benzenedown the middle hole of the outhouse. The next morning, after a hearty breakfast, Grandpa “sniffed the air and said: ‘By Gosh! how full of beans I feel.’ ” He hurried down the path to the crapper, sat down inside with the full intention of meditating, lit his pipe, and dropped the match down into the fumes. Hearing the explosion, Ma immediately realized what had happened:
So down the garden geared on high, she ran with all her power,
Behold the old rapscallion squattin’ in the duck pond near,
His silver whiskers singed away, a gosh-almighty wreck,
Wi’ half a yard o’ toilet seat entwined about his neck.…
He cried: “Say, folks, oh, did ye hear
The flame had ignited methane gas leaking from a pipeline beneath the toilet that had been damaged by heavy equipment running over it.
Jenkins sued everybody—including the contractor that operated the heavy equipment and the coal company that owned the property—for $10 million. He had spent over a week at the burn unit of Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, getting skin graftson his forearms. But perhaps the greatest injury was to his pride when the Associated Press beamed the story around the world: “Man Injured in Toilet Blast Files Suit!”
I’m not privy to all the facts, but the respondents have so far refrained from suggesting to the court that maybe the plaintiff just happened to let one hell of a fart.
What makes Mr. Jenkins’s story even more fantastic than it seems is that the exploding toilet has been a running joke for many years now, as well as an urban legend. Normally these shithouse shenanigans feature a wife throwing or spritzing a flammable liquid into the toilet, followed by the unsuspecting husband sitting down, lighting a cigarette, and creating a pyrotechnic finale that’s detrimental to the health of his butt cheeks. According to the urban myth debunkers at the San Fernando Valley Folklore Society ( http://snopes.com ), the liquid can be paint thinner (toxic waste disposal), pesticide (to kill a scary bug), a powerful cleaning solvent (gasoline or worse), hairspray, or cheap perfume, just as long as it’s highly combustible. The writers of the NBC television series
L.A. Law
even recycled the joke into an episode called “Smoke Gets in Your Thighs,” which aired originally on November 15, 1990. Douglas Brackman (Alan Rachins), head of the show’s law firm, went to the men’s room right after someone had painted the walls and dumped the used turpentine into the toilet. Brackman sat down and lit a cigarette, and explosive drama ensued.
Dr. Jan Harold Brunvand, a folklorist who’s written several books on urban legends, as well as the introduction for a children’s book by Catherine Daly-Weir called
The Exploding Toilet: Tales Too Funny to Be True
, says the story was originally a rural gag about outhouses before indoor plumbing came along, and even then the victim was usually a husband or grandfather who sat down on the wooden oval, gazed contentedly out the small half-moon window in the door, and lit his corncob pipe, not realizing that one of the womenfolk had just finished cleaning the walls with some old gasoline and then dumped the remainder down the hole.
The joke was in fact enshrined by poet Robert Service, the Scottish roustabout who chronicled the American West. In “The Three Bares” (1949), he wrote that Ma disposed of some used benzenedown the middle hole of the outhouse. The next morning, after a hearty breakfast, Grandpa “sniffed the air and said: ‘By Gosh! how full of beans I feel.’ ” He hurried down the path to the crapper, sat down inside with the full intention of meditating, lit his pipe, and dropped the match down into the fumes. Hearing the explosion, Ma immediately realized what had happened:
So down the garden geared on high, she ran with all her power,
Behold the old rapscallion squattin’ in the duck pond near,
His silver whiskers singed away, a gosh-almighty wreck,
Wi’ half a yard o’ toilet seat entwined about his neck.…
He cried: “Say, folks, oh, did ye hear
Similar Books
