(The beer and the potty )
When you have close to 100 people at a party and you have one bathroom in the house, this becomes a problem very quickly. I don’t know how many people stayed for the whole weekend (my mom kept count and I actually have those records) but one year I counted 23 tents. The essentials of the weekend became very clear very quickly once the party was established.
The Beer – There was always beer. The beer would arrive whenever the person picking it up could get there. Sometimes it was Friday before Noon. Sometimes it was Friday afternoon. It was always an event when the beer arrived.
We started with a pony keg that you had to hammer a wooden tap into. I remember lots of spraying foam and laughter and great applause once the keg was successfully tapped. As the party grew the supply of beer grew. When there was one keg, we took and old refrigerator drilled a hole in the door and the tap came through the door. The keg stood inside surrounded by ice. When there were two kegs, we laid the refrigerator down, stood the kegs inside, poured ice in, and covered them with trash bags full of styrofoam peanuts for insulation and then shut the door as far as it would go. In the end we had three kegs.
Once, a keg had been mislabeled at the warehouse. Instead of getting three kegs of beer, one of the kegs was Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy. (A lemonade like beer) This posed a very disturbing situation. Needless to say, a large beer run was made and the keg was returned after the holiday and a refund was given.
The Potty – Again, with a single bathroom house and a LOT of people, a port-a-potty became a clear necessity. It was delivered Friday before Noon and placed at a distance from the house on as level ground as possible. One year someone threw up in the urinal of the potty. We don’t know who it was and no one ever confessed to doing it, but we think it was a young drinker. Anyone with any sense would have just gone to the grass behind the potty.
One year we added a “spit sink.” This was an old porcelain sink that we built a wooden frame for and hooked to the hose. It even had a mirror. It was placed by a tree by the side of the driveway. This allowed people to brush their teeth without occupying the ever necessary bathroom-especially in the mornings.
My Patio 