I don’t know if younger people have ever gone into PUBLIC steam bath?  At one time there were many for most people could not quite get clean using more available cold water.  The steam bath or, in Yiddish, a schvitz, provided that service.  Other groups, mainly from Europe were used to the availability for the once a week visit to the steam bath in order to make themselves smell a lot better.  But, you can bet there was no ground swell of the universally approved “normal” odors wafting from all people, all the time.  Cleanliness did not become an obsession until fairly recently in the history of time.

But, this is only an introduction to what is a delicate subject related to my reflections mentioned in the paragraph above.  The UN has written and published a report that toilets are not used by huge numbers of our fellow human beings to whom a schvitz would seem like paradise.  The question is: Where do they go to use a bathroom?  There are not many bathrooms in large swaths of the human populations in what is popularly called the “Third World”.  In fact, here in the good old U.S. of A. where are the public toilets of old?  Two centuries ago there were places, usually in barbershops where you could get a bath but using a toilet – a public one - was a rarity for there were none.  That was one of those things you took care of yourself – a private thing.  It was a public thing if you stepped into someone’s decision to do the deed just where you needed to pass by.

This excursion into such private matters is a matter that the public had to deal with eventually and there were public toilets that were set up for the use of the general public.  They got to be pay for use toilets and free PUBLIC ones were no more.  Today, the question could be asked: where do the poor people go to the “bathroom?” They are regularly excluded from going into places of business if they look scruffy enough to be asked their business if they ask to use a “bathroom”.  Services for relieving oneself are still offered by gas stations on highways and in mall-like structures paced at five to ten mile intervals.  But you have to have the wherewithal to own a car to avail yourself of such services.  Many poor use the good old outdoors for some of that is public.  If private, they get you and them in a lot of trouble.  Just for a place to answer the call of nature.

This is a delicate subject and I hope I have not offended anyone.  But the question of a toilet facility probably does not bother you as it does for someone else who needs to answer Nature’s call and the public does not operate or provide such a service.  If I am wrong about this, about the non-availability of a public schvitz or a public toilet for the poor and homeless among us, please tell me about it.