STRAIGHT DIRTY TALK ABOUT KERR LAKE PARKS

It’s not really polite, but let’s have a little plain toilet talk. Forget the problems of government, forget bureaucracies that move at a snail’s pace, there comes a time when human decency, that means that we as a people act more like people than animals, must come back to the forefront of the way we as people behave.

I, being Frank Timberlake, the head blogger here at Kerr Lake Park Watch, make it a point to ride the campgrounds around the lake and stop by all the facilities operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the states of Virginia and North Carolina. There is a multitude of public facilities, thank goodness, especially if you are visiting for any period of time. And now I vent.

There is a small army of dedicated, overworked and underpaid maintenance professionals who keep the water running, the lights on, the showers scrubbed and the toilets clean. Bernie and his crew in Virginia are one group and I know one young man on the NC side, Tyrone, whose entire focus and dedication is on his job and cleaning the restrooms is part of that job.

After seeing a restroom being cleaned in a Kerr Lake park today, I later stopped back and either a baboon unfamiliar with the usage of modern toilets or a Neanderthal human had messed all over the outside of the toilet. That’s right; I said the outside of the toilet. If it was an accident, then the person should have cleaned up their own mess. This simply cannot be a way of having fun at a park, can it?

I am told that such occurrences are more and more frequent. Those of you who are reading this are probably not a part of the problem, but we all need to be a part of the solution. People have to take more accountability for their actions, especially when those actions come into play at shared facilities like parks. We do not live in this world alone.

Unlike hotels with private baths, with the use of shared restroom facilities come shared responsibilities to see that our parks are maintained. To me, if you witness someone abusing park facilities, they should be reported and removed from the park, permanently or as much as allowed under the law.

It is naive, but I would hope that next time the person who defecated that Kerr Lake public restroom would in fact, find it locked and would resort to having to use the woods, whereby his buttocks were tingled by the introduction to rectal poison ivy.

Meanwhile, the next time you run into a maintenance worker cleaning a restroom or any part of the park, take a second and thank them! Their job is tougher than it should be. That’s just my two cents.