‘The ‘Perm-a-Potty Field’ in southern Alabama is an unmissable attraction, not because it is pleasant in any sense of the word, but because it is huge and neon and it smells as though a shit-laden truck crashed into a lake of formaldehyde. Society assures us that chemical toilets break waste down but we all know it’s still there, that it’s not something else, and there’s no greater evidence than the ‘Perm-a-Potty Field’ which may as well hold an ocean of excrement in its thin chemical disguise.
Satellite images indicate that the field is 159 potties long and 98 potties wide, evenly spaced and growing all the time. The man that owns the field is a mystery. He answers no calls. Speaks only to the companies that will sell or rent him more potties for the field. He pays off politicians who might raise a stink, as it were, and he lives far away. Somewhere cleaner and fresher and duller.
The ‘Perm-a-Potty Field’ is open to the public but it is not welcoming. No signs indicate that a traveler should use these toilets- they would be lying if they did. The outer potties are filthy beyond saving. The inners are hit and miss but reaching them means spending longer in that stinking invisible cloud. In those staticky plastic corridors.
People have died in the ‘Perm-a-Potty Field.’ That’s not true, but eventually it will be. It would be a shame to be the first, wouldn’t it?’
-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside
