But it worked—it worked often enough to bring grins to the faces of any men who were around at the time, and enough to make the town women sometimes a little cool toward Charley Mason when they went in to buy things at his store. Because it was strictly a man's joke, and he was the man.
Owensville is a small town in western Pennsylvania. It sits low in one end of a green-sided valley, just a few frame houses and stores strung along a main street ... and that main street is on the one and only road that leads through the valley: a road that all the maps show to be a convenient and dependable connection between the Penn Turnpike and several other major routes, should you be heading south.
So a lot of people drive through Owensville every week—upwards of two hundred or so. And there's always one or two of them in the mood to spend a little time in a restroom—the last Howard Johnson's is twenty miles back along the Turnpike, and the road down into the valley is a bumpy one besides, and you know what that does to your innards.
So they come driving around the bend under the trees and their car wheels thump across the old wooden bridge across Miller's Creek—and once in a while one of them would pull off the road into the yard beside Charley Mason's General Store because they'd spot his crescent-doored outhouse standing there. Charley always kept it painted up so it'd be easier to see—clean white with a red roof—and over the door he'd lettered, big enough to see from the bridge, PUBLIC RESTROOM.
Then somebody'd get out of the car and go in, and a few minutes later the chain that came up through the roof would yank down as whoever was inside reached up and pulled the handle.
And then the big old cowbell on the roof—the biggest and noisiest Charley'd been able to find—would dance around in the mounting he'd made out of an angle-iron, and go Blongle, blongle, blok!
After a minute the door'd open and the city folk would come out, looking puzzled and kind of sneaky. They'd give a glance up at the roof and see the cowbell mounted there. Some of them might grin at the way they'd been had. But mostly they'd get into their car and drive off maybe a little faster'n they would've ordinarily.
If it was a woman, it was five times as funny. Because some of the older men were always sitting around on the porch of Charley's store playing pinochle, or lounging down by the bridge just talking, and when the woman would come out they'd all grin at her and those who had mustaches might twiddle them a bit, and she'd get redder'n a bushel of tomatoes.
Women drove off faster'n anybody, usually.