Heard Around the West: Oregon county gets tough on lemonade

Don’t even think about selling lemonade in Multnomah County, Ore., unless you’ve obtained a temporary restaurant license, says The Week magazine.

After 7-year-old Julie Murphy failed to do the required paperwork, county officials threatened her with a $500 fine unless she shut down her stand at a local art fair. Murphy closed her business and reportedly burst into tears.

Wyoming

Mayor Scott Mangold of Powell, population 5,000 or so, in northwest Wyoming, tries to keep it light on the town’s website, cityofpowell.com.

If you want to vote, he advises, you’d better be 18, a U.S. citizen and a resident, all no-brainer qualifications, he admits. “Could you imagine people in California voting in Wyoming?” he asks. “Our downtown would be filled with wolves driving hybrid cars!” One resident tells us that the mayor exhibits a limited imagination when it comes to wolves: “I would think that wolves would drive little, fast sports cars, the better to catch the slower, older or disabled cars.”

In other Wyoming news, a Centennial woman who has begun researching a book about outhouses. “I now send out a call for potties to launch my book project,” said Melanie O’Hara, telling the Powell Tribune that her book will be called Wyoming Outhouses and the Folks who Built Them. Privies were a part of her childhood after the war, O’Hara said, and thanks to a grant from the Wyoming State Historical Society, she’s toured the state and discovered some amazing “roadside restrooms” that still stand, including a 28-holer “with 14 seats on one side and 14 on the opposite to allow the genders their seclusion.”

Right up to World War II, O’Hara said, “Communal use was very common in our culture.” People have responded to her call for tips with stories and photos; often, she’s learned, family outhouses had two adult-size holes and one lower, smaller hole for the children. “It’s the lighter side of architecture,” she said.

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(Betsy Marston edits Writers on the Range for High Country News in Paonia, Colorado (betsym@hcn.org).