I live in the state of Washington, and the town I grew up in is almost smack dab in the center of the state.  I’ve long since relocated to the Seattle area, because I felt that my hometown lacked the number of beard-wearing, coffee-drinking, better-than-me-because-they-drive-a-Suburu people that I needed to really feel like I was living.

The result of this is that there is now roughly a 3-hour gap between where I live and my Mom lives.  So anytime I start feeling like the bad son for not allowing her to see her grandkids more often, we pack up the Family Truckster and head that way.

Today on our return trip, we decided to take “the long way home,” through the beautiful Cascade mountains, and one of our favorite towns in the world, Leavenworth.  If you’ve never been, think of Leavenworth as a Bavarian town, nestled in the Cascades of Washington, but just a stone’s throw from a bunch of beard-wearing, coffee-drinking, better-than-you-because-they-drive-a-Suburu people.

It’s an outstanding drive, especially given that we got some pretty decent weather for October, but the tradeoff is that our Son, who is a couple of months from turning 4, had to take a couple of potty breaks on our 4.5 hour drive.  One of these breaks needed to happen almost instantly as he suddenly yelled from the back seat that which all parents on a major highway fear hearing, “I NEED TO POOP!”

I jerked the car down the nearest forest road and we were all set to let him get out and fall his own tree when I spotted the following items on the ground, just off the road:

• A “well-worn” mattress.
• An empty case of Keystone beer.
• The outer casing of what appeared was once a gas-powered leaf blower.

I asked my wife under my breath (as not to alarm my son), “Are you seeing this?”  She didn’t reply, but her eyes, and the fact that she was drawing blood from my forearm with her nails screamed, “Honey, let’s find another abandoned forest road to get murdered on.”

So we drove.  And we drove.

And we drove.

What seemed like hours was probably 10-15 minutes, but when you’re constant glances to your backseat are met with a 3-year-old returning a stare to you that mixes fear, determination to keep things in place, and pain, time slows to a crawl.

And then… out of the blue, like a shiny, green, pillar of hope… we spotted it.

The Honey Bucket.

Known to some as The Porta Potty, or as my Father lovingly referred to it, “The Sh*t Shed,” this modern marvel is nothing more than a thin plastic shell, a toilet seat, and the worst mixture of chemicals and human to ever be placed inside a thin plastic shell.

I pulled up in front of it, shut the vehicle off and turned to my son as I pointed.

“You’re going to go potty in there.”

“Cool!” was the reply, which I was actually almost disappointed by.  I think part of me was hoping for a, “No… I can wait until the end of time if I need to.  Please don’t make me go in there.”  Instead, he was actually thrilled with the idea of going potty in what he later coined, “A poop pod.”

So we entered the Honey Bucket together.  Father and Son, ready for the worst and hoping for the best.  Frankly I half expected the owner of the mattress, case of beer and leaf blower to be sitting inside when we flung the door open.  He’d just laugh and say, “I’ve been expecting you,” and my wife would watch in horror as the door slammed and locked behind us.

Instead we got the typical stinky honey bucket, complete with what looked like 25 years worth of other 3-year-old droppings floating in the nuclear-blue sludge.  My kid was sitting there, talking about how cool all the blue poop was and doing his thing, when I got hit with a moment of inspiration:

A Honey Bucket Coffee Table Book!

I’m thinking of calling it, “Honey Buckets Around the World: Blue and Brown in Any Language.”

Now before all of you Internet Jockeys run around sending me Amazon links to the thousands of Honey Bucket books that already exist, let me explain that mine will be different.  Mine will be nothing more than the following:

• A text description of the Country, coordinates, temperature and time of day.
• A picture of the outside.
• A picture of the inside.
• A picture of inside the actual toilet.

I’m not trying to be gross with that last picture, but I just think it would be cool to see how blue poop compares around the world.  After all, you’ve seen one Honey Bucket, you’ve sort of seen them all.  It’s that blue poop that really is the finger print of the honey bucket.

By this point, I was snapped out of my book writing haze by my Son’s laughter.  he was now standing knee-deep in the blue sludge in our honey bucket and laughing wildly as his Mom pounded on the outside of the plastic shell yelling, “You better not be letting him play inside that thing!”  He was a mess, but it was no big deal, as I have a luggage rack, and as mentioned, it was unseasonably warm.

Better yet, I had a damn fine book idea.