Plumbered

One and all the home-grown film public has reared its noses that twitch delightedly over the lavishly plumbered (coined word!) bathrooms of Cecil B. De Mille,^([sic]) who knows his sunken tubs, wash basins and bath mats.

Goals shift slowly—just now we have physical comfort and safety as prime illusions; but it is almost certain that life would offer more and richer gratifications to imaginatively developed men if we could have a little less of these modern idols, and a little more of that divine freedom, adventure, and vivifying sense of uncertainty and irregularity which the virile individual enjoyed in less plumbered and policed days.

But so many have been irretrievably spoiled by ill-advised and crudely undertaken alterations and additions! For every one photographed, at least a dozen have been passed by because of the unfeeling treatment, rather than the neglect, to which they have been forcibly subjected! Mere neglect usually but adds illusion to the element of the picturesque. But the country carpenter—even possibly the city architect of general practice—may not possess that delicate sensibility that is necessary to take over these simple little survivors of an early age, and continue their charm and beauty, in a little enlarged and perhaps more fully dormered—and, possibly, also plumbered!—version.

All used trailers have been remodeled, all with different floor plans, all completely wired and plumbered, all with electric brakes, good tires and ready to roll.

Proded by the White House, there is now a pronounced shift in the official attitude toward water pollution. The bureaucratic torpor is dissipating. Industry is mo longer brazen about its wastes. But until our well-plumbered citizenry in general commits itself to anti-pollution appropriations and to strong individual support of clean waters, Americans are doomed to chant, along with Charles Palmer at the Legislative Correspondents’ annual dinner: / “You keep going your way, / I’ll keep going my way, / River, stay away from our door!”

Now, it may strike you as a bit strange how the codes of wildness, freeness, urgency, the primitive and such have become the basis of our visual doctrine about what’s really cottage country and what isn’t—especially since the Muskoka spectacle of endless electrified, plumbered, septic-tanked little houses quickly accessible from Toronto by paved roads is not exactly a vision of the Forest Primeval.