By Terry Karkos,Staff Writer

PERU – Mix a baseball diamond with bathroom essentials and vegetables in a water-filled tub, and one wacky race idea develops.

Make first base a toilet, and second base, a toilet paper dispenser. Then, stir in some outhouse race cars. Oh, and don’t forget the chocolate sauce. It completes the madcap affair.

All that was missing were the toilet plunger and more outhouses in Saturday afternoon’s first annual Outhouse Race at Peru’s two-day neighborhood block party, SummerFest.

“I think it went really well for its first year,” said race organizer Janet Rowley. “It was a lot of fun. Good entertainment that was just perfect for this area.”

Held behind SAD 21’s Peru Elementary School, five teams raced two outhouses from third base to first base and back.

The teams were the “Peruvian Think Tank,” “S.S. Toilet,” “Git r dun,” “Poopsters” and “Red Sox Potties.”

Racers had to build an outhouse and then march with it in the previous night’s parade through town.

But, with more teams than outhouses, builder David Getchell let three other groups compete with his “Peruvian Think Tank” race car, Rowley said.

The object of the relay race was simple: dash from third base to first and back in the least amount of time.

Facing the absurdity of the station situations was the hard part.

One person had to sit on the toilet seat in the outhouse racer on wheels. Locomotion came from two people pulling it and two pushing it.

At first base, one person had to wipe the chocolate sauce-covered toilet seat clean with his or her bottom.

The toilet paper roll at second base had to be changed, and, at third, they had to find a cob with no corn on it in a large tub of water filled with corn and squash.

“The toilet paper roll change seemed to be a problem for the men, but a lot of kids hesitated at the toilet. They’d lift the lid and gingerly peer in,” Rowley said.

“A lot of them don’t even know what outhouses are,” she added.

“Git r dun” won trophies for most unique and best time. One team with Getchell’s racer took first place for time.

“It was fun, but like nothing you ever want to experience again. It was very sticky,” said racer Briah Arsenault of Peru.