Jim Pepper – "Witchi-Tai-To" (1971)

Witchi-tai-to, gimee rah

Whoa rah neeko, whoa rah neeko

Hey ney, hey ney, no way

The Washington, DC City Council recently voted to reduce maximum sentences for burglaries, carjackings, robberies, and other crimes as part of a comprehensive revision of that city’s criminal code.

The council considered decriminalizing public urination as part of that criminal code revision.  DC Mayor Muriel Bowser opposed that action, and the council decided to follow her wishes.  So public urination is still a crime in Washington, DC.

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Mayor Bowser is only one of many females who seems determined to take away the constitutional right of American males to urinate when and where they please.

For example, my friend John Alden told me some time ago that his wife makes him sit down to pee because his aim is occasionally less than trustworthy.

“All I know is that God gave me a tallywhacker whose dimensions prevent me from sitting down to pee without said tallywhacker being purt near submerged.” John explained to me recently.  “So I figure he intended me to stand up to drain the lizard.”

Maybe John’s errant aim would be improved if he had a target to shoot at:

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What are the implications of the continued criminalization of public urination in Washington, DC for bicycle riders like me?

The DC law in question reads as follows:

It is unlawful for a person to urinate or defecate in public, other than in a urinal or toilet.

Since I always go behind a tree or bush when I need to relieve myself in the middle of a bike ride, it seems obvious that I have nothing to worry about – after all, it’s not urinating “in public” when I conceal myself behind a tree . . . right?

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If Washington, DC, really wants to stick its nose into male urination practices, perhaps it should follow the lead of Ghent, Belgium.

I saw hundreds of these handy-dandy four-hole devices on the streets when I visited Ghent a few years ago:

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I sometimes ask myself, “What is the best record that’s never been featured on 2 or 3 lines?”  

There are a lot of possible answers to that question.  One of them is most certainly NOT “Witchi-Tai-To,” which was released in 1971 on Jim Pepper’s Pepper’s Pow Wow album.

Click here to listen to the single version of “Witchi-Tai-To.”