Nice Summer days are so far and inbetween up in Wisconsin that when they come along people living there grab up their cheese hats, brats and coolers full of Miller and set off on some extreme outdoor fun of one sort or another.
So was the case in the Summer of 1973 when from college we would trek some 50 miles to Elkart Lake for sports car races in the woods. The main attraction being the campgrounds surrounding the woodlands track that had rock bands and more fun than going to a Green Bay Polka bar with Al Yankovich.
This time round our friend Aggie brought a wapatoolie toilet. A common house toilet which he placed on the ground outside his RV. We all then contributed to it by adding bottles of booze of one sort or another to the rear holding tank which Aggie filled with various sodas and juices to help take the edge off. He even supplied a ring around the bowl to hold cute little cups.
Our friend Sam had graduated the year before and was teaching high school down in Milwaukee. Arriving a day at around Noon on Saturday Noon he played catch up. As the rest of us piled into cars with our keg of beer, Sam, who wearing a turned down white sailor hat to cover his ever growing baldness, stood by the wapatoolie toilet dipping a cup not a few times. No one had told him that Mad Dog had dropped a 100 hits of LSD into the back of the thing sometime earlier even though he caught a ride with Mad Dog in his fancy 280z.
We soon arrived at our favorite spot on Turn 4, met up with everyone, took off our shirts for a day of Sun and handed out big red cups, Sam, who had not only missed the party the night before, but a whole year of party the rest of us were still having in college as he toiled in a Milwaukee ghetto school, began drinking the beer from the keg nozzle.
Things fell apart rather quickly for Sam after we lost track of him. Word came that he was in the Acid Rescue tent over on Turn 3. So Butch, Mad Dog and I went see what could be done. Indeed, there stood Sam in the middle of the open tent, clothless but for the upside down white sailor hat with his pants on the ground arguing with a few pony tailed medics. Seems Sam had pooped his pants which he refused to put pants back on, a logical argument had he been at home.
While discussing our options, one of which was to put a poop covered Sam into Dog’s sports car, the police arrived, threw a blanket over him and carried him away. Deciding there was not much to be done, we decided we would just wait and bail him out the next morning. The day and night progressed as expected. We went back to Turn 4 finished that keg, got another for the campground of evening bands and emptied the wapatoolie toilet.
Sunday morning Butch and I rummaged around in the RV and found an extra shirt and pair of pants which we folded nicely, putting Butch’s GB Packer hat on top of the little pile of clothes. Off we went to the Elkart Lake police department to see about Sam.
The middle aged lady police officer at the front counter told us that Sam was indeed there and they would release him to us without bond. On the counter in front of her we placed our little pile of clothes with the Packer hat on top explaining that he may need these things.
The reply from the motherly police matron was one of the most memorable lines I can recall in my life. So much so, here I am 40 years later telling the story one last time. She removed the hat, handed it to me and said…
Oh, he has a hat…
Epilogue: Word got out down to Milwaukee that and he was fired. He moved to Las Vegas where he became a blackjack dealer and lived happily ever after.