One of the best features of where we live is the gravel road that leads to our place. It comes up a moderatly steep hill and dead-ends at our driveway. It can be a booger in the winter and bone-jarring after a good rain. The roads are owned — and maintained — by our homeowners association so we all kick in to a road fund a couple of times a year. A few neighbors have lobbied for paving but it would cost a fortune and most of us are fine with living on a gravel road. A feature, not a bug.

Living at the end of the road, at the top of a hill, there is never any traffic. If I see or hear a car or truck it is a) someone coming to see us, b) someone coming up to turn around, or c) someone who is lost. I wouldn’t know how to put a price on that.

But you probably know them as Papilio cresphontes, the largest butterfly in North America. I’m told what I witnessed this afternoon in Barb’s Zinnia bed was a mating ritual. Amazing to behold.

As one (female?) flitted from flower to flower, the other (male?) hovered a couple of inches behind, never landing on a flower.

A nice young man showed up this morning to pump out the contents of our septic tank. Watching him work, I was reminded of the slang term, “honey wagon.” Let’s go to Wikipedia:

A honeywagon is the slang term for a “vacuum truck” for collecting and carrying human excreta. These vehicles may be used to empty the sewage tanks of buildings, aircraft lavatories, passenger train toilets and at campgrounds and marinas as well as portable toilets. The folk etymology behind the name ‘honeywagon’ is thought to relate to the honey-colored liquid that comes out of it when emptying the holding tanks.

They honeywagon has a long history:

The honey wagon was originally a horse-drawn vehicle that went through back alleys to collect human excreta. Houses at that time did not have flush toilets or indeed any form of indoor sanitation beyond the chamberpot. In rural areas the outhouse (privy) is associated with a pit latrine of various sorts, but many towns and cities depended on some variant of the pail closet, which needed frequent emptying. At each outdoor toilet, the driver would stop the wagon, flip up the back hatch door (trap-door) of the outhouse, slide out the pail (bucket), pick it up, and dump the contents into one of eight oak half-barrels in the wagon box. The half-barrels had no lids.

Like the young man told me this morning, “Somebody’s gotta do it.” In the television and film industry, the term has a different meaning.

In America, the term honeywagon is usually given to a truck, trailer or combination of both with a number of dressing rooms for the actor. These either have individual toilets or a communal set built in. Some honeywagons will be just two large toilets. Others are a combination of variously sized rooms for specific purposes: these rooms can be private dressing rooms assigned to a single person, larger rooms configured for the wardrobe, or makeup departments, small individual toilets for the crew to share, and multiple user or individual shower rooms for bathing.

What, you thought Meryl Streep used a Porta  Potty?