Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (29 page)

Oology:
The study of eggs

Eschatology:
The study of final events as spoken of in the Bible

How long have young men used beer to buck up their courage around young women? Longer than you think. Here's the story that the Bura people of northern Nigeria used to explain where beer comes from.

L
ong, long ago there was no such thing as beer. The people were happy. God had put people in the world, but he had not told them that there was such a thing as beer. God did not want them to know about beer.

There was once a man who wanted to take a girl from a village far away to be his wife. He would go to talk with the girl, but her people would not give him a chance. He did not know what to say to them, for he was very bashful. Every day he would go, but they would not let him have her for his wife. He was getting very tired of going and not getting her.

One day he started to visit the girl's folks. Halfway between his village and their village, he met a devil. The devil said, “I see you go on this road very often, but I never see you bring anything back. I just wonder why you go. Do you want something over this way?” The man said, “Yes, I want to take a wife in a village over this way, but they will not give her to me. I do not know what to say to them for I am too bashful.” The devil said, “If I give you my advice, will you take it?” “Yes,” said the man excitedly, “I will. Tell me, please.”

The devil said, “When you go home, thresh some corn and separate the male grains from the female grains. Put the male grains in water and leave them until they sprout. Grind the female grains into flour and pour this flour into a jar of water. When the male grains have been in the water a few days, take them out and let the sprouts grow a little more. Then put them in the sun to dry. Next, put a pot on the fire, and with the flour which has been soaking in the jar, make mush. When the mush is made, put it out to cool. When the mush is cold, put it back into the jar of water. Grind the sprouted grains of corn which have been drying, and put that
flour into the same jar with the mush. Mix up the mush and corn flour and the water. When you have mixed them well, cover the jar and let it stand for a day. It will get sweet, and on the second day it will foam. Get a strainer and strain it. After you have strained it, drink some of it. After you have drunk all you can, go and get your wife. You will see then what this thing will do for you. The name of it is beer.”

The man said, “Thank you, thank you very much, my father. You have given me very good advice.” And each went his way.

The young man went home and threshed corn, and divided the male grains from the female grains. He did everything that the devil told him to do. He made beer, strained it, and drank all that he could. The beer made him drunk and he did not know what he was doing. His understanding became warped. He started off to see the girl's people. They said, “Welcome,” and he went into the compound and saluted them.

He began at once to ask for her, but he did not talk like a bashful man any more. He talked fast and loud. Her people were amazed. They said, “Always before, this young man was bashful, but today, he is not like he always was. What is the matter?”

The man said, “No, no more chitchat. If you do not give me my wife today, you give me back my cotton which I have given in payment for her.

I will not have small talk any longer. I have always been bashful, but now I am tired of it and I will not have it any longer. Our negotiations will finish today. If I take her, all right; if I do not take her, all right, and that is that.”

Her people were amazed by what he said to them. They decided together that they had better give him his wife. They allowed him to take his wife home with him that day. The man said, “I tell you beer is something wonderful.”

This is how the Bura people began to make beer. One man began first, and even until today, men still make it. Beer is of the devil, and there is no argument, for he told them how to make that which was his own.

“I read about the evils of drinking, so I gave up reading.”

—Henny Youngman

On the left we have the wisdom of Homer, Greek poet and philosopher, who lived 3,000 years ago. And on the right we have the other Homer.

Uncle John feels a responsibility to “eliminate bathroom ignorance.” So for this edition of the
Bathroom Reader
we're going to answer the basic question: What happens after you flush? (It's more complicated than you think.)

For you, the trip has ended. You've “done your business,” (hopefully you've also had a few minutes of quality reading time), you've flushed the toilet, and you've moved onto the next thing.

But for your “business,” a.k.a. organic solid waste, a.k.a. “Number Two,” the trip is just beginning. Here's a general idea of what happens next.

If you live in a rural area, your house is probably hooked up to a septic tank. We'll get to that later.

Before the 20th century, “sanitary systems” typically dumped raw sewage directly into rivers, streams, and oceans. Today, if you live in an urban area or a suburb, chances are your toilet and all of the water fixtures in your house—the sinks, showers, bathtubs, dishwasher, washing machine, etc.—are all hooked into a sewer system that feeds into a wastewater treatment plant. So the journey begins when Number Two mixes with all of the rest of the wastewater leaving your house. Then it enters the
sewer main
that runs down the center of your street (usually about six feet beneath the road surface), and mixes with the wastewater coming from your neighbors' homes.

From there the sewer main probably joins with other sewer mains to form an even bigger sewer main. Depending on how far you are from the wastewater treatment plant, the sewer mains may repeatedly join together to form ever larger pipes. By the time you start getting close to the plant, the pipe could be large enough in diameter to drive a truck through it.

By now Number Two has a lot of company, especially if any storm drains feed into your community's system. Anything that can be swept into the the storm drains—old shoes, tree branches, cardboard boxes, dead animals, rusty shopping carts—is now heading through the giant pipes toward the treatment plant.

This floating garbage would destroy the equipment in the plant, so the first step is to remove it from the wastewater. This is accomplished by letting the water flow through a series of screens and vertical bars that trap the really large objects but let everything else—including Number Two—float through. The big stuff is then removed and disposed of, often in landfills.

Now the trip starts to get a little rough:

• The wastewater flows into a grinder called a
communitor
. The communitor is like a huge garbage disposal: It takes everything that's still in the water, Number Two included, and grinds it down into a sort of liquified mulch that's easier to treat chemically and easier to remove. Number Two has now “become one,” so to speak, with all the other solid matter still in the wastewater.

• Next this slurry flows into a
grit chamber
, where inorganic materials—stuff that can't rot, like sand, gravel, and silt—settle to the bottom of the chamber. Later, they're disposed of in a landfill.

• The wastewater then flows from the grit chamber into a closed
sedimentation tank
, where it is allowed to sit for a while so that the organic matter still in the water has a chance to settle to the bottom of the tank, where it can be removed.

• Have you ever dropped a raisin into a glass of 7-Up and watched the bubbles carry it to the top of the glass? So have the folks that design treatment plants. Some plants use a
flotation tank
instead of a sedimentation tank: They force pressurized air into the wastewater, then pump this mixture into an open tank, where the bubbles can rise to the surface. As they float up, the bubbles carry a lot of the organic matter to the surface with them (including what's left of poor Number Two), making it easier to skim from the surface and remove.

By the time the wastewater has been processed through the
sedimentation tank or the flotation tank, as much as 75–80% of solid matter has been removed.

So what happens to all of the organic solid matter (i.e., Number Two and all his friends) that has just been removed from the sedimentation tank? It gets turned into fertilizer.

• It goes into a
thickener
, where it's—you guessed it—thickened.

• Then it's fed into a closed anaerobic tank called a
digester
, where it's—right again—digested. Enzymes break down the solid matter into a
soluble
(dissolvable) form. Then acid-producing bacteria ferment it, breaking it down even further, into simple organic acids. Bacteria then turns these organic acids into methane and carbon dioxide gasses. The entire process of decomposition can take anywhere from 10 to 30 days, during which time it will reduce the mass of the organic matter by 45–60%.

• What's left of the digested sludge is pumped out onto sand beds, where it's allowed to dry. Some of the liquid in the sludge percolates down into the sand; the rest evaporates into the air. The dried organic material that's left can then be used as a soil conditioner or a fertilizer. (Moral of the story: wash your vegetables before you eat them.)

That takes care of the organic matter—the part of the process known as
primary treatment.
Number Two's trip is now at an end. But what about the liquid in the sedimentation and flotation tanks? Taking care of that is known as
secondary treatment
: