TOOTHLESS TURKEYS

Surviving life in Wright City didn't require rhino hide, but I often wished I had it?

For starters, we had what we called "salt water" mosquitoes. They were kinda gray/black with zebra stripes and so big they could stand flat footed on the ground and slap the teeth out of a full grown turkey. I remember black clouds of them that would make a high pitched whine when their wings flapped near your ear.

Sometimes we would see one "suckin" our life juices from an extremity and just sit there and watch. We didn't know about blood borne pathogens and well, it was kinda boring in WC. Obviously we would do near bout anything to make the time pass faster. Them suckas would swell up while gorging on our blood until they couldn't fly away. Being still bored, we would "pop" them to see how much blood would splatter?

WC was also likely the world champion breeding ground for fleas, ticks and chiggers. I have walked across a pasture and looked down to see a brown carpet of seed ticks or fleas on my pant legs. I have itched/scratched for many a day due to the indelicate location of millions of chigger bites. And I have tried all manner of country remedy to get ticks unstuck from my carcass. (campho phenique, nail polish, and red hot sewing needle to name a few)

However, I believe that the absolute bane of my time in Wright City was poison ivy or poison oak!

As just one example, I was in the creek bottom between our house and Grandmother and I spied a host of ripe muscadine grapes in the top of a tree. The tree didn't have any limbs for the first 30 feet, but the WC possum just "shinned" the tree. I wrapped my arms and legs around the trunk and inched up to the first limbs (wearing a tee shirt and cut off jeans). The good Lord only knows what the poison ivy growing on that tree trunk did to the inside of my extremities, my face, my stomach, etc. Mom doctored me up to look like my sorry butt had been dipped in a barrel of pink calamine lotion, but I near bout cratered over that one anyway?

All this was brought back to me when I bought the Tin Star. I used Dad's old machete to whack down brush (and whatever) for months on end. After felling the offending foliage, I would wrap my arms around a big bundle, hug it to my chest, and deposit it in a pile to be burned later.

Sure enough, every dang time I turned around I was breaking out with progressively worse poison ivy reaction. What I learned from my research was that you don't develop an immunity, you just get more sensitive.

It seems like every year I am more coming full circle while experiencing once more the things that brought me to this stage of my life?