The Jacks
The Jacks
Admiral Biscuit
There were a lot of things in cities that you noticed and then didn’t pay any attention to. Things like manhole covers—they were ubiquitous, but normally unless they were fenced off and somebody was down them, you paid them little to no mind.
And the little partitions in some alleyways in Manehattan were like that. I’d seen them before but not really registered them. They reminded me of bollards that were spaced too wide to have any real effect, or else the little gate around turnstiles. Maybe what a subway entrance would look like if they decided that they weren’t going to be charging fares any more.
I’d probably seen a pony go down one of those alleyways before, although if you’d asked me to swear in court that I had, I wouldn’t have.
And in hindsight, it should have been obvious. After all, I’d been to Central Park before and seen the carriage horses.
I’d been out later than usual: I’d gone to a movie theatre to see a movie called Desert Orchid, which was about a racepony of the same name. It was my first experience in a pony movie theatre, and much like a human cinema, the seats were uncomfortable and the concessions overpriced.
The movie wasn’t all that great, either, although the rest of the audience seemed to like it.
I was walking back to my hotel when a flickering light down an alleyway caught my eye. When I took a closer look, I saw a wagon sitting kind of crosswise in the alley, and I could see a head silhouetted by the lantern, although it took me a moment to figure that out, since the rest of the pony was underground.
That was an unusual sight, so I turned down the alleyway to see if I could figure out what was going on. Most of the roads were cobblestone, and that took a lot of work, so maybe she was repairing the road.
The smell hit me when I got a little bit closer, and if she hadn’t popped out of her hole to investigate me, I think I would have just turned and walked away.
She was wearing a full-body suit that looked very much like a hazmat suit, which was something that I hadn’t known ponies had invented. She’d pushed the hood off, probably to get a better look at me.
Without even thinking, I stuck out my fist, and she lifted up a forehoof, then thought better of it and reached forward to bump me with her nose instead.
“I’m Joe,” I said.
“Tam Tam.”
“You’re—”
She nodded. “I’ve gotta work at night. Manehattan law. Got to stay out of the way of the ‘nice ponies.’” She made adorable little air quotes with her hooves.
I was really curious what her cutie mark was, but I wasn’t going to ask her to take off her suit so I could see. “The city has running water and flush toilets.” I’d heard that some of the more rural areas didn’t.
“Not everywhere,” she informed me. “Most of the buildings do, sure, but what’s a pony to do when she’s hitched up to a wagon?”
“So you’ve got drive-through stalls.” Now that I knew what they were for, it made complete sense. The wagon behind would provide some privacy, and the half-walls would complete it. I suppose if anypony was really curious, they could look over the stall, but maybe they had social rules for that, like in the men’s restrooms back in America.
Or maybe since they went around naked all the time, they really didn’t care.
“Yup. And they’ve got to be cleaned out every now and then, ‘cause they get full.”
Back on Earth, of course, there were all sorts of septic tank cleaners out in the country, and of course the guys that hauled the outhouses around. I suppose they must have emptied them out, too—I wasn’t sure how that worked. Was there a hose that went in them, or a drain valve at the bottom? Probably a hose; a drain valve might leak.
And did they swap them out when they got full, or have some kind of a rotating schedule where they went by with some kind of a hose truck and sucked them out then put more of that blue stuff in them?
Tam Tam didn’t have blue stuff. She only had an open wagon which at least had a tarp to cover it, although that was currently rolled back.
I thought about asking her about leaks, then decided I probably didn’t want to know. Surely there was some kind of liner in the wagon. She must know what she’s doing.
“How many of you are there?”
“How many of me?”
“Working for the city? Cleaning up—this.”
“Couple dozen,” she said. “Me and my brothers, we’re the biggest crew. Most everypony else is one or two at most.”
“Where do you take it when you’re done? The sewage treatment plant?” I didn’t know if that was a thing, but it was on Earth, and they did have plumbing, so it seemed logical.
“Sometimes. Kinds depends. There isn’t space to compost it in most of Manehattan and it takes too long to get it out to the outskirts of the city by wagon, you know? But we’ve got our own rail siding, and we ship it out to Appleoosa so they can improve the soil out there.”
“Isn’t Appleoosa kind of desert?” That was what I’d heard.
“Yeah, so the soil’s not too good. Weather patrols can get the rain, but if there aren’t any nutrients in the soil, the plants won’t grow, and the sand will just wash away. It’s kind of difficult to improve land like that, you know. Gotta work slowly and get hearty plants in first to fix the soil in, and then start improving it. We bought some land out there; ‘cause it’s really cheap, and when my little sister gets old enough, she’s going to start working it and improving it, and once it gets good enough that we can grow crops, the whole family’s going to move out there. Until then—” she motioned at her cart.
“Does it pay well?”
She nodded. “Not a lot of ponies really want to do it. Gonna be weird when I quit, though; working during the day instead of the night. Hey, I don’t mean to be rude, but—”
“No—I’m sorry for taking your time. It was good talking to you, and good luck with your farm.”
“Thanks!” She pulled the helmet back over her head and I stayed around long enough for her to drop back in the pit, then walked out of the alleyway and back to the street.
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Why can't these pull throughs also be flushable?
Also old slang, "Jakes, a type of toilet in a small structure separate from the main building which does not have a flush or sewer attached"
In Vienna, Austria we still have two-horse carriages driving around as tourist attractions (They are called "Fiaker" - en.: "Fiacre").
The horses nowadays must wear "Poo-Bags" to avoid soiling the street
Harry King.
King of The Golden River.
I bet he finds it Very easy to get a private audience with Celestia.
Hmms. Wouldnt that make his messenger, Rank Gong?
I enjoyed this walk down the lesser trotted paths of a city :)
Horse manure is basically the same thing you clean out from under your lawnmower deck... with some digestive enzymes and bacteria thrown in. Of course it does depend on what the horse is eating. Horses on alfalfa produce a really pungent manure. But it isn't really bad to clean horse stalls, the worst part is finding the wet spot, decomposing urine smells like ammonia and that is acrid. However I'd much rather do that than clean kennels or work in a human sewage treatment plant. Your world building is very interesting, Admiral, and well thought out and your Author's Note is informative as well. This is a very interesting read so far. tirilee is correct, even in American cities there is a catcher for manure behind the horses pulling carriages. Does nothing for the urine, though. But that's nothing. They're letting people poop in the streets and sidewalks in California! If you have to step in poop, choose horse poop.
And here I was expecting a personable stallion with a lisp.
9174935
They presumably could be, but they probably aren’t all that way.
9175053
Something I don’t really see Equestrian ponies going for.
9175269
Thanks!
9175484
Me neither
9174974
There’s lots of slang for toilets, I’ve discovered. Also for the people who work hauling manure.
The working title was “FNFE Jacks” and I just left it at that.
9175206
I’ll be honest, you’ve totally lost me here.
9175359
Yeah, it’s certainly less offensive than human poop (and sadly, I’ve recently spent more time with human poop than horse poop).
Oh, yeah, totally. Horses really aren’t that bad. I don’t mind cow manure from a distance, either; not sure how bad it is up close.
Thank you!
Most of my stuff actually has a full blog post attached with references and whatnot; this was a fairly simple story, so I just tossed it in the box at the bottom.
Most, anyway. I’d have to look; I’m not so sure they do that in my little town when they have parades with horse-drawn stuff in it; then again, this is a farming town, so a bit of poop is no big deal. I work on trucks that mostly live on dairy farms, and . . . as Applejack once said, “It ain’t exactly mud.”
Letting, or people do? Anyway, yeah, given the choice, I’d go for horse poop every time.
9175471
Afraid not. In fact, I didn’t know that was a thing until you put a link in.
I so enjoy this series Biscuit.
Huh. Educational!
9175512
Thank you!
9175529
The more you know!
9175497
Harry King. Owner of the sewage works outside Ankh Morpok. He makes money while cleaning up the city. For a given value of cleaning. And money. As in, you dont pay his guys, they Dont come round to collect.
9175556
Ah, got it.
I really need to sit down and read me some Pratchett.
9175359
I'd wager that Equestrian Pony poop is very different than horse poop. Even if you don't subscribe them to be full omnivores they still have a very diverse diet and probably a wider array of gut microbes to accommodate that diet.
9175573
As Harry learned, everyone has use for something. If the farmers and the alchemists won’t take it, the tanners will. People paid him to take the stuff away and paid him to take it off his hands. With money coming in at both ends of the transactions for him, there was practically no overhead except paying his growing pool of employees.
Harry started at as a street urchin and became one of the richest men in the city, The King Of The Golden River.
I know some places call the portable chemical latrines that events use (not sure how they are actually called in english) jack-on-the-spot.
Simple and efficient, if not terribly so. It's probably expensive to retro-construct sewers after the buildings have gone up...
9175206
nice, bravo, well done sir.
Did you ever read JohnPerry's pictorial
essayblog here on the use of horses as a primary transport in cities? It's illuminating. And icky.WARNING: Not safe for lunch or dinner.
I remember driving a pump truck, no one liked the job, but it paid really well.
Ah. That's what you meant when you said sci-fi had never dealt with this topic.
(Context: Admiral posted the bit with the hazmat noseboop in a Discord chat. I said it sounded like a first contact scenario.)
Still, crap happens, and it won't unhappen on its own. A very reasonable answer to what to do with a city's organic byproducts, to say nothing of Tam Tam's long-term plan.
9175359
This does lead to the question of how Equestrian diets impact the odor.
9175629
It probably is, since they’re more omnivorous than IRL horses (plus magic and all that), but it doesn’t have to be. I suppose the big thing is how much pasture grass they eat as the foundation of their diet.
9175845
That’s not a wrong idea, either. There’s certainly stuff like that, even today, where people will pay you to take it and then someone else will pay for it later. Scrap tires are kinda like that, actually--we have to pay to get rid of them, and then the company that buys them from us sells them to someone else for some other purpose, after they shred them (apparently most of them are currently going to a power plant that’s set up to burn scrap tires).
9175854
In America, they’re generally called port-a-potties, at least around here. And I’ve heard of one company that’s called “Johnny on the spot,” which is similar etymology.
9176314
Mostly depends on how often they have to be emptied.
That’s the kind of thing that very much depends on other circumstances. I don’t know for sewers, but I do know of other places where infrastructure updates were more expensive than reduced labor costs, so they kept doing things the old way for a long, long time.
9177643
Not until just now . . .
I knew that cities had a lot of poop back in the day, but I didn’t know that they had literal mountains of the stuff. That’s actually a really good blog post.
ETA: I’d like to see somebody do a PoE story where they turn up in the late 1800s in a major city. I bet a pony would have a few things to say about that. Man, if I was good at period pieces. . . .
9177855
In one of the seasons of Ice Road Truckers, one of the drivers was doing that. Nobody else wanted to, and to his mind, a load was a load, so he ran the wheels off the thing.
9178701
Yeah, at least not that I was aware of (but if you know of some good Sci-Fi where they do cover where the poop goes, I’d read it).
Tam Tam has a great long-term plan--possibly the best. She (and her bothers) can easily make sure that the very best organic-fertilizer-to-be winds up being applied to their lands (and you’ve got to figure that they’re experts in that). A few years of hard, smelly, work in the streets of Manehattan, and then she’s set.
My own headcanon is that it still smells like horse poop and looks like horse poop. But I base that on no actual evidence that the show has given us.
9179636
I never seen that show, but now I have to...
9179773
It’s a good show, IMHO. Especially if you like driving trucks, or watching other people do it.
9179790
I no longer drive If I don't have to anymore, but a reality show about a pump truck divers would have a very small audience...
Very small, like tiny, to non exsistant...
9180000
As with Ice Road Truckers, it’s not so much what you’re driving, it’s where you’re doing it.
And it turns out there’s a niche for practically anything these days; I watched an excellent video of a man making a bucket recently.
9180011
But I would rather just sing...
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza,
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.
9175573
Let us know when you start, so we know why all the updates stop for a while - you won't want to put 'em down.
9179632
I also hear portajohn and - in NEPA at least - job johnny.
And hey, more world building!
9180623
We’ll see--I’m at least halfway decent with multitasking.
And then he spots another pony mucking out a poo-poo parlour, "Hello there, random pony."
"Oi, what's up, weird alien monkey?"
"Just wondering what your name is."
"Well, it's Latrine, but it didn't used ta be. Oi changed it."
"You changed your name TO Latrine?"
"Well, it's better'n Shitpot, ain't it!"
"Erm... good choice..."
Some people will get it.
Night Soil workers used to be responsible for hauling their loads in London. Unfortunately they were not known to always dispose of their waste correctly, which is believed to be a significant factor towards the current state of the Thames at the time.
9187519
With a noun-based naming system, there’s sure to be occasions like that.
9188329
I’m sure that the night soil workers weren’t the only cause of all the pollution in the Thames, and I bet back then it was okay to dump it in the river, anyway (if I recall, that’s where a lot of public sewers went back then). Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a fair bit of stuff coming from upstream, too.
I watched a short documentary once on how London got its sewer system, basically after a really bad summer when the Thames wasn’t flowing very fast and . . . well, the s
t accumulated and started to stink more than usual.
9189278
Hah, yeah! Specifically, the smell reached their political offices. Never has a reform bill passed so quickly.
And I never said it was the only factor. There was a mix of industrial waste as well.
9190109
I guess the moral is that if you want to get something done, poop outside politician’s offices.
9191277
Ah yes, the highly legitimate, though rarely performed, alternative method of compaigning in Equestria.