On nuns and chamber pots...

[alexpgp]

I finished reading Ed McBain's The Big Bad City, which was an entertaining installment of his 87th Precinct series of novels. During the course of events in the book—one thread of which involved a murdered nun—the author allowed his cop characters to let loose with several "nun jokes," none of which bear repeating as attempts at humor, but one of which did get me to thinking.

The joke concerns a nun who is driving along in her car, runs out of gas, and walks up the road to a gas station, only to find the only container available for her to take gas back to her car is a chamber pot. Returning to her car with the gasoline-filled chamber pot, she begins the process of pouring the contents into her gas tank when a passing car stops and the driver says, "I wish I had your faith, sister!"

What gave me pause about this story is the appearance—or rather, non-appearance (in my mind's eye)—of that chamber pot.

Do you, dear reader, even know what a chamber pot might be?

And if you have heard of chamber pots, and you know what they're used for, is there any particular image of what might be called a "quintessential" chamber pot that pops into your mind?

That's what really got me thinking. Forgetting what little humor there is in the story, if the nun had returned to her car carrying a gas can, it would have been pretty apparent what the container was from its appearance, whether it was a 5-gallon parallelepiped of a "jerry can," or a dinky little one-gallon "approved gasoline container" than looks a little like a super-sized red soft drink cup with a straw stuck in it.

And despite the fact I not only know about chamber pots but have seen them in use (and have actually used them!), I have to tell you, there is nothing particularly visually unique about a chamber pot.

And so, of course, the geek began to wonder: How did the driver in the story know the sister was using a chamber pot?

To which, out of the blue, the answer came: Because it had once belonged to the driver of the passing vehicle!

There's got to be a story in there, somewhere.

Comments

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Maybe it was an old joke? How old are the 87th cops by now?

Chamber pots were pretty distinctive, as pots went, because they had curved tops for comfort.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Although McBain started writing the books in the series in the 50s, The Big Bad City was published in 1999.

Cheers...

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Well, now, McBain might have had the joke stuck in his memory since the 50s. Or, were the original cops still timeless in the 1999 book, like Archie and Nero being forever their original ages, in books with later settings? Or in 1999, was he still setting his stories in earlier years? ;-)

Maybe it's something about big cities. In London it's always 1895.

[skipperja.livejournal.com]

You've probably looked up chamber pot images, but the ones I remember were distinctive. They had flared tops to make it easier to sit on them or to fit into supports under a commode seat if you had one. The sides swelled out a little and they had a bail.

My grandfather was struck by lightening while using one. His other hand was resting on the aluminum trim rim around his kitchen counter. He was knocked out, but recovered. Grandma never had anything but the chamber pot for the first 25 years of their marriage. Grandpa just went outdoors.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

My quibble with the joke is, that it would be hard to pour from that into a car's gasoline input. Even with a funnel, you'd need one person to hold hte funnel and another to lift the pot, and most gasoline funnels aren't wide enough either.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Well, then...

maybe that was what the passing driver's remark was about! Nothing snarky about the nature of the liquid being poured, but "Good luck pouring gas into your car from the chamber pot!"

Of course, such an interpretation would sort of rob the joke of its almost obligatory scatological bent.

Cheers...

[p2nches.livejournal.com]

We call it "ночная ваза" or "ночной горшок". Typically, it looks like this:

[marketeer]

There was a story in the news this week about a couple who are so desperate to live in Park Slope that they use a chamber pot because their apartment has no toilet.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Following the drift of the chiché, one presumes they did have a window?

<grin>

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

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