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There's a fly buzzing around me, as I pen my tiny tale of woe. She came in yesterday, when it was warm enough to leave my door propped open all day long[JAN 8]. Today, the high temperature[and low] will be in the 50's, and the door is shut tight, and my heating-unit set on 78 degrees. Her buzzing sounds angry, because she cannot find a way out. She also cannot find anything in here that smells dead, to lay her eggs on[it has been so pleasant, weatherwise, this entire past week, that I didn't wear any socks][my two-pair of dirty unders are apparently unsuitable][that is what KANDY thought too].
I long for those good old days[a frequent pastime & source for many a STORY], before folks had contracts with pest-control services. Back them days, it was strictly hand-to-hand combat,
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and windows and doors weren't sealed against invaders, quite as effectively[remember putting a blanket or towel at the front door, to keep Jack Frost on the other side?]. First line of defense was a can of RAID[advertised on black&white TV-screens about the size of the full-color LED-display on your SmartPhone, using animated spray cans with biceps, and cocky-roaches that couldn't get away fast enough, ending up supine, with X's for eyes,
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or shown beneath tombstones with humorous inscriptions]. Then, HotShot came along, and them cocky-roaches quit even trying to run off! Both products belched out streams of toxic aerosol, and left oily residue on everything in your house.
Even in those wonderful 1950's, it was them old folks[and country folk still without TV] that had got things figured out. At the corner store, they had curly streamers, thumb-tacked to the ceiling somehow, dangling down with swell-scented adhesives on the brown paper strip. You could see how good they worked, and little boys like me, sometimes counted them fly-bodies out loud for them lady-shoppers in the store. On a good day, you'd spy one that just got stuck up there; hear her buzzing in anger too, or wiggling whatever parts that weren't stuck good yet!
But trappin's for lazy folks, or for busy store-owners cuttin' pork chops, or ringin' up sales on a register, what was hand-cranked. But even them stores, what didn't use them, sold what a real man wielded in his own home. You bought new ones, two at a time. Them handles was made like them wire clothes-hangers, that piled up at your place, because the dry-cleaner kept delivering new ones twice a week, with your Daddy's work-clothes hangin' on 'em. One mis-calculated swat/swing, could ruin the weapon, and that's why you needed a spare handy. If you threw a battered one away, and you didn't forget you done it, you bought two more on your next visit[to count all them dead flies again; guage how things was going down to the store].
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They was sellin' plastic fly-swatters by the time I come along, but ever-so-often, at a country store, up at the lake, where you could buy wriggly bugs and slimy worms and such, that they'd taken great pains to keep alive, and in perfect ass-hauling condition, you'd find a rack full of the real McCoy's. They sold good out in the country, and the clerk kept a private stock of them swatters, just for the locals what depended on 'em. He knew some city-slicker would spy that rack of deadly-weapons, and peel-off enough new bills to buy every 'last one.' That's why the price was double what they charged neighborly-folk; and them old boys in rings around the centrally-located pot-belly woodstove got a good laugh out of it, every time they sold outta them swatters.
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For a bright young feller like me, they'd sometimes demonstrate the killin'-power them weapons had in 'em, and their personal efficacy, when armed with one. I got a thrill beyond compare, when one of them codgers quit his whittlin' for a spell, and commenced to battin' them green blow-flies right out of the air, just for my entertainment.
You gotta be quick, and them fellers was! They had deadly aim with that bakky-juice too, when they spied one a them cocky-roaches restin' on the floor someplace nearby!
Attached to the coat-hanger wire-handle, at the business-end, there was a 3"X4" rectangle of screen-door wire-mesh, what lets the air pass through, so you don't blow that sucker outta the way, like you will with a newspaper or magazine. They hand-stitch a red ribbon around the edge, so the mesh don't unravel itself. They's all made in America, and always in small towns where there ain't much for work. You pretty-much use scraps of screen-wire, thread & ribbon to make them; summa that comes from fixin' doors and windows in the Spring[I've even seen rusty taken-down screens recycled for these old-timey swatters]. "A country boy can survive!" Keep your whole family workin', if you was born with a entrepreneurial spirit!
I've seen them chaw-spittin' old men hang that swatter, now with flies stuck on it, back where them city-slickers can buy a used one for double the price of a new one; they'd wink at me, sayin,' "That'll show them strangers how good they work!" It was watchin' these old fellers, how I learned all the things you can git a barn cat to do with one a them swatters too!
![and windows and doors weren't sealed against invaders, quite as effectively[remember putting a blanket or towel at the front door, to keep Jack Frost on the other side?]](https://img.wattpad.com/7d390b1efb4e4f5ca39145f0259251d23b6fd85c/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f692d33356d6c77674b44793838513d3d2d3638313736373630332e3135376135623565616130366561353238313839393030353632382e6a7067?s=fit&w=720&h=720)
