The world looked so pretty and clean this morning I started to think I was in Disney World. Dogs were grinning from the windows of their master’s trucks and the early morning light made the distant hills look like big old lions rolling their muscles. “These two hours will pass in no time!” I thought as I rolled from Central New Hampshire over to Portland Maine.

Only then I began noticing that about every 100th tree was infested with tent caterpillars whose webby nests look like cotton candy caught in a sandstorm.

Only then I saw a skinny old lady dressed in Barbie doll-style togs close her car window on her own dog’s chin. She did it slowly but she did it on purpose – pushed that button so fast to get herself some coffee it hit the poor thing smack under the jaw.

Only then I saw a porcupine who was worse than killed by the car that sealed its fate; I mean yeah it was dead but it also had this long red rope-looking thing coming out of its stomach. It looked like a sweater somebody decided to un-knit. It looked like a vacuum cleaner whose plug someone just pulled from the wall…

And all of this WOULD have really harshed on my mellow – until I passed a little phone-booth-sized structure up on blocks in somebody’s front yard, wooden, shingled-roofed, with the classic crescent moon carved into the door and in leaning against it a big hand-painted sign saying “For Sale By Owner.”

It was an outhouse of course but a new outhouse or a slightly used one? I was darned if I knew, but tell ya what, just the very thought of an enterprising spirit like that had me smiling the whole rest of the way to Portland.