By C. Paul Bergeron
Part 2: Houseflies & Mosquitoes
In the early 1930's many houses, especially in
the rural areas, did not have screen doors and windows. So there were
problems with insects such as house flies and mosquitoes. Besides the
nuisance factor of having these insects invade one's house, the threat
of typhoid fever carried by the flies and malaria carried by the
mosquitoes was very real.
There were no government programs designed to control such insects, so
it was up to the population to provide their own defenses. House flies
and mosquitoes invaded houses in clouds that numbered probably in the
hundreds or even thousands.
The most effective defense against the house flies was the flypaper
strip. This strip was about 2 inches wide and was coated on both sides
with a mixture of an attractant and an adhesive. The strip was usually
hung from the ceiling to about three feet above the table where the
family ate its meals. The flies landed on the strip looking for a meal
and got their legs stuck in the adhesive. And there they remained until
they died of dehydration after days of struggling to get off. As more
and more flies were trapped, the efforts of their collective wings made
an audible sound, so as you sat at the table eating your coush coush, you
could hear a buzz, buzz, buzz. Eventually every space on the strip was
occupied by a fly, some dead, some living and struggling to get off. The
strip was taken down and dropped into the wood burning stove and a new
strip installed.
Square sheets of fly paper coated on only one side were also used. These
were placed on tables and shelves throughout the house and trapped flies
that had evaded the hanging fly strip. Disposal was in the same manner
as the strips.
One home-made device worked but could not handle huge quantities of
flies. This was a bowl half filled with soapy water, covered with a
cardboard with a small hole in the center and syrup spread on the
underside and a few grains of sugar around the hole on the top of the
cardboard. Flies would be attracted to the sugar around the hole and
somehow discover the syrup underneath, crawl through the hole and walk
upside down to eat the syrup. As the inhabitants walked through the
house, they would give the traps a "thump" on the cardboard, dumping the
flies on the underside into the soapy water.
And, of course, there was one or more good old fly swatters in the house
to get those flies that tried to land on the food or in your plate
during meal time.
Mosquitoes were an even bigger problem. While not as nasty and repulsive
as the flies, they bit and transmitted the malaria bug from one person
to another. They existed by the thousands, but it took only one inside
your mosquito bar to keep you awake all night with its constant humming
and occasional bites. The numerous ponds, puddles and ditches provided
ideal habitat for the insects to reproduce and there were no defensive
programs to control them.
During those days, both man and beast suffered. Man had the same weapon
that our early ancestors used to protect themselves from the sabre-toothed tiger and other dangerous beasts, and that is fire.
Fire, not to scare the mosquitoes, but to make smoke to drive them out
of the houses and hopefully also out of the stable and out of the pig
pen.
Each night preparations started about the time that the sun was setting.
The direction of the wind was noted very carefully and the firewood and
green Spanish moss were placed in a position that would allow the wind
to carry the smoke into and around the house. The fire was lit and when
the wood was burning briskly, the green moss was added and the white
smoke enveloped the house and filled every nook and cranny. After a few
minutes the mosquito population in that house was probably zero.
Most houses had beds equipped with mosquito netting, referred to as
"mosquito bar", but in houses that did not have that necessity, they
closed the doors and windows and endured the heat rather than fight the
mosquitoes that would reenter the house after the smoke had dissipated.
All the houses that received that daily smoke treatment had a distinct
smoke smell when entered at any time of the day.
Next: Part 3: The Economy
A Cajun Boyhood, by
C. Paul Bergeron
© 2007 by C. Paul Bergeron