Crossposted at Politicook.net
I have already told you about Granddad's housing solution and his taste in exterior design. Unfortunately, buses do not come with screens for the windows, and flies and mosquitoes are both a real nuisance and hazard in west central Arkansas.
Granddad did not take that into consideration when he moved into the bus, and between his less than stellar housekeeping habits, hot summertime weather, and no air conditioning, he just had to open some of the windows to get air. He did have a small fan to circulate the air, but it also circulated the flies and mosquitoes.
He tried hanging some screening over them, but could not get a good seal, so they still got in, the flies by day and the mosquitoes by night. This tormented him, especially the mosquitoes. The flies were a bother, but the mosquitoes were a plague. So he decided to get some Hot Shot.
Hot Shot was a brand of insecticide (and still is). The material available in the 1960's came in a green glass bottle with a finger pump (the predecessor of more ergonomic trigger sprayer). It was basically a solution of DDT in highly refined kerosene. And it did the job!
Well, Granddad sprayed some around the bus, and it helped some. It did not eliminate the mosquitoes, but knocked them down somewhat. Having a pond only a few dozen feet from his place did not help, and the old tires holding water did not help, either. The mosquitoes were winning the fight.
As I said, he had to have some fresh air, because even at night it can often stay in the 80's with relative humidity near saturation in west central Arkansas, so there was no choice about opening the windows. One particularly bad night, and having no repellent (and all the stores -- both of them -- in town were closed, he finally hit of a solution: instead of using the Hot Shot as a space spray, which did not last through the night, he decided to use it as a repellent.
Since the mosquitoes were mostly bothering his head, he took a towel, unscrewed the cap, and saturated it with Hot Shot. Then he wrapped it over his head, including his nose and mouth. At last, he was free from the torment of the mosquitoes!
When the people who rented the rock house, and sort of looked after him found him the next morning, he was in pretty bad shape. The kerosene had irritated his lungs to a large extent, and the DDT had him twitching, jerking, and also led to the failure of his body control, so he was pretty much a mess.
They called my mum (the Boggs did have a telephone, although Granddad did not) and told her that he was really sick. I was just little, so she and I went out to his place. She made me stay in the car. The Boggs had removed the towel, but he was in serious distress. My mum made a long distance call on their telephone to Fort Smith to get an ambulance (no such thing as 911 then), and it arrived soon enough.
After over a week in hospital, Granddad was released and came back home. Dad helped him put up some screens over a couple of windows (back then the only screen available was steel or mosquito netting, and they taped mosquito netting securely to the outside of the windows). Granddad never fully recovered from the Hot Shot. The combination of lung damage from the kerosene (and 70+ years of smoking Prince Albert) and the systemic poisoning by the DDT weakened him. He only lived in the bus three or four more years, but never used Hot Shot again.
Warmest regards,
Doc