Real Texas Men Used To Pee Together And That’s Okay

Everyone seems so concerned about where other people go to the bathroom and it used to be not that much of a problem.

Dilemma

So you walk in a bathroom with five urinals in it. Someone is in #4. What is the proper amount of space you give them? The answer is usually, #1 and maybe, just maybe #2, but #3 and #5 are completely out of the question. This is a modern dilemma because back in the day there weren't so many choices. Somewhere along the line people started getting weirder about their potty time because I don't remember any problems or disagreements about the way things use to be done.

The Old Solution

Texas clubs and a few other places use to have pee-troughs in them. In case you're fortunate enough to not know what this was, it was basically a big box hanging off the wall and you just peed right next to strangers. It was also no big deal for someone to muscle their way in and you're shoulder to shoulder, sometimes squeezed in tight, urinating with a new friend.

More Details

A lot of Texas club owners took to throwing a bunch of ice in the pee-troughs. This keep the smell down and gradually washed the urine down the drain. More than a few probably saw it as a way to get rid of some old ice. The late Sam Kinison, who made his comedy home in Houston, even made fun of these iced-up troughs with a very off color comedy routine.

Gone But Not Forgotten

I'm glad these went out of style. The were no doubt regulated out of style by building codes that required "x" amount of urinals in proportion to capacity. I'm also certainly in no hurry to buddy pee with strangers, but it's a quaint, if not a little gross, reminder that we didn't use to have such a problem with bathrooms.