“I’ll be back in thirty minutes,” I boasted as I hopped in the old Dodge van. In reality it
would take thirty minutes just to get to the halfway point, so exactly how I was going to
do the entire trip in that time escaped me.

It was the second year of Double Rafter Cattle Drives and the use of a new pasture lease
meant our week long trip would cover nearly 70 miles. I had just spent the last ten hours
in the saddle trailing cows 16 miles from Wolf Creek to Columbus Creek. I was hot,
tired and disappointed to see some of our equipment had not made it to our second camp.
“The wheels kept falling off the outhouse so we left it on the road,” my trophy wife
explained.

Earlier that spring, in a flash of maniacal brilliance, I built a portable three-hole outhouse.
I robbed the tire and axle apparatus off an old W-W squeeze chute and welded it to my
creation. The idea was to dig a pit, drive the outhouse over the hole and then lower it to
the ground by releasing the pin mechanism that held the wheels in place. It worked well
during the test drives around the pond in my driveway. (My neighbors ignored me as
they did the testing of most of my inventions.)

Apparently my adaptation needed tweaking because at road speeds the wheel apparatus
would vibrate off the axle and drop the crapper to the ground. My short driveway did not
allow such test speeds.

I raced down the road and found my invention balanced on one tire not quite one-half
mile from our first camp. I jerked it up on both wheels and then used a combination of
pack ropes to lash everything in place. Once hitched to the Dodge, I zoomed down the
road and thought, “without surprises I have a good chance of making it to camp almost as
fast as I predicted.” Then I hit the last seven miles of rutted dirt road and things changed.
A 15 passenger van towing an outhouse at high speeds kicks up an enormous amount of
dust…or at least that’s what the little kid with the fishing pole peddling the bicycle must
have thought as I zoomed past him. The pack ropes strained to keep the wheels aligned
when a deep rut popped the tires free and the outhouse crashed to the dirt. Momentum
kept my cowboy crapper in motion for several hundred yards. The dust cloud was
spectacular.

I jumped out of the van, tipped the outhouse upright and then dragged the wheels out of
the ditch. As I laid on my back retying my pack ropes, the kid on the bicycle peddled by
without saying a word. This mishap cost me valuable time and I knew I needed to hustle
to make Columbus Creek in thirty minutes.

I hit the driver’s seat and stomped the accelerator to the floor. Within two minutes I
raced past the kid on the bicycle and left him in another cloud of dust. Then once again
the wheels rattled free from the outhouse, flew through the fence and across the pasture.
Gathering tires and ropes took longer than the last repair and before the outhouse was
road worthy, the kid peddled by again.

I decided it was impossible to reach camp in thirty minutes so my new goal was to beat
this kid to Columbus Creek. (Granted it would be a small victory but it still would go in
the “W” column.) Within minutes I raced past and left him coughing and choking in my
dust cloud.

Victory was mine and I was high-fiving myself when I raced around the last curve and
broke the tongue off the trailer. (It was the dreaded metal fatigue I had seen in my
younger days on the weed sprayer.) I watched the outhouse shed its wheels and then flip
into the ditch.

A serene quietness came over me as I gathered my outhouse components and lashed the
biggest pieces to my bumper. Speed was no longer of the essence; I just wanted to get to
camp. I slowly tied each knot. This time, when the little fisherman peddled by, I
detected a bit of a smirk as he coasted the last half-mile to Columbus Creek. He won.
The above analogy illustrates the national health care debate. The Obama administration
is softening their approach and has now eliminated the death panels and the single payer
government option. Figuratively, they are tying what is left of their health care reform
outhouse to their bumper and promoting its passage.

Initially, I tried to go fast but my ultimate goal was just to get the outhouse to Columbus
Creek. President Obama also tried for speed but health care reform is just a tool to
incrementally replace free market capitalism with socialism. Regardless which remnant
is implemented, the federal government will grow to an incomprehensible size and will
dictate every aspect of your life. In the end, only the state legislatures can stop this
madness.