A friend and I were talking the other days about the olden days and somehow the conversation turned to fly paper. Back when we were young most people did not have air conditioning. In addition, most homes did not have the full fitting screens that are on houses today. What you normally did was raise a window high enough that an expanding screen would fit. Usually the fit was not tight enough and the flies would get in anyhow. In short, it was either die from the heat or put up with flies who were downright annoying. You could try to zap them with a fly swatter, but many wouldn’t land in the right spot so you could smash them. I did get fairly competent in knocking them out of the air which helped some.
Somebody had invented flypaper which was really really sticky. Thus, the idea was to put it around in appropriate places – where the baby, dog or cat wouldn’t get it. Then hope the flies would walk on it and get stuck! They also had rolls of fly paper that you could tack up, and the roll would twist down – providing another sticky spot for the flies. If you had enough around you usually caught quite a few – at least in Western Pennsylvania were we lived as did plenty of flies. My friend wondered if they were still making fly paper. I have no idea, but there is probably some place you can find it. If they do, I might buy some and wrap it around palm trees and perhaps the palmetto bugs (roaches) might get stuck when they come out of the trees. Actually, that probably doesn’t make sense for me as we do not have any palm trees, and the neighbors might object if I put fly paper around theirs.
Well enough about fly paper. It is the Christmas season and everyone is supposed to have good thought while trying to figure out what you should buy for people. I am having trouble in that area. By now I usually am pretty far along, but nor this year. About all I know at this point that even if it is available, flypaper is not the answer. The Blonde in the house deserves something nice, but what? We have been married for many many years, and my choices based on what I have bought her in the past limit for what I can search. For example, she already has a leaf blower that I got her a few years ago and she doesn’t like to use hammers (even pink ones) so more tools are probably not the answer.
Obviously, I am going to have to do some hard thinking here. The same problem applies to our youngest grandkids. They used to have a rather long list for us a couple of months before Christmas. We finally got one from the grandson, but nothing from the granddaughter. Our grandson has just turned 15 which means he now has a learner’s permit. He probably would like an unlimited gas card which is at least a start although not too likely. His parents might prefer that he didn’t have too much gas. There is no question that gasoline can be very expensive these days. Heck, now the taxes are more than I paid per gallon when I got my driver’s license (at age 16 – we didn’t have the learners permit at 15 in Pennsylvania). My friends and I used to drive into the gas station and get a dollar’s worth of gas which gave us five gallons or so. The attendant also put the gas in the tank, checked the oil and washed the windows!
Now, please excuse me while I explore Christmas gift ideas – hopefully good ones!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com
