This is part of the “Tell Me a Story” collection of stories. To know the neighborhood and kids, please check out the map and “whos who” pages first for some context.
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So this is a story about a truck, a lot of cool mist and kids being kids.
When we were little, there were no year-around schools, no cable or mobile phones. The summer days seemed to last forever because the sun didn’t go down until well after nine and life seemed pretty simple–eat, sleep, play. We had more than a dozen kids in our neighborhood and we all were outside together during the day, had dinner and were back messing around the neighborhood by seven until dark.
After supper, at least one night a week it would come into our neighborhood.
It was loud but not enough to be uncomfortable and sounded like a constant, low-volume foghorn and we could hear it before we saw it–a white pick up truck carrying a large metal tank and blasting billowing smoke-like mist out the back. So Cool! When this thing came and slowly drove through our neighborhood, we would drop whatever we were doing and get on our bikes or run into the street to follow it. To touch it.
This was an event!
Johnny and I and ten other kids, were usually pedaling or running right behind this truck–I mean close enough to tag the truck’s bumper.
We treated the driver with celebrity and, “how did he get such a cool job???” He would smile and wave to us as we made fools of ourselves, sometimes crashing our bikes into each other or running over other kids because we couldn’t see clearly through the moist smoke.
I remember one time, Alvin or Eric, wearing no shirt, skateboarded down the hill to catch up to the truck, but he couldn’t see through the fog and got going so fast that he faceplanted right into the back of the it. He was laughing as he picked himself off the pavement and we were laughing, too. God looks after kids and fools. As I rode my bike behind the truck the foggy mist felt cool against my face because the summer nights were so darn hot.
We all called it the “DDT Truck” but had no idea what it was about. This was Raleigh engaged in chemical warfare against mosquitoes because of the worry of malaria and other illnesses transferred by the sucking little menaces.
The “cool mist” was a fog of powerful insecticide, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) but at the time, no one said it was harmful.
The government probably tested the effects of DDT in clean laboratory conditions on mice or normal humans and didn’t anticipate streets full of hellion kids chasing the trucks and eager get facefulls of this stuff for minutes at a time, a few times a month, and over the course of a few years.
Eventually, DDT was linked to cancer, proven harmful to wildlife and was banned for use in the U.S. in 1972.
So awful that it was Banned For Use. WTF?
But, there we were. Kids laughing and following this toxic Pied Piper–this rolling giant can of Raid–for the pure thrill of running through the mist.
And, around the neighborhood our parents would be outside laughing with us. Inhaling this crap was a family activity!
There were no public warnings saying, “If this truck comes down your street, run the HELL AWAY. Go inside. Hide your children. This stuff is poison!”
No warnings, no nothing.
So, instead of running away from chemical warfare, we ran toward it like summer moths to a bright light. Little kids. Eyes open, inhaling deeply, not wearing much clothing in the Southern summer heat. Parents enjoying watching their kids have fun.
I suppose there is a line in the sand separating innocence from stupidity in situations like this. I mean just minimal logic–if it Kills mosquitos, then it can Kill humans–may have been useful.
If I hadn’t have done it, I wouldn’t believe it happened and I am alive enough today to remember things like this.
Yeah, the things we did when we were young. Darwin talks about the survival of the fittest. We were not the fittest, obviously not the smartest. I am just going to believe that “God looks after kids and fools.”
I have to. I have no other explanation.
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A Father Looks Past Sixty 