Smokin Skeeters

As I get older, I find myself reminiscing more and more about my childhood. Time seems to almost always minimize the bad and exaggerate the good. That’s probably a good thing and I know that memories are always sweeter than reality.

For the most part, I missed out on the grandparent thing. My grandmothers had died many years before I was born. Life was tough on women – even just a generation or two ago.

I did have an elderly neighbor lady who served in that capacity. Miss Katie lived across the road in my grandfather’s old house. She was always, Miss Katie, even though she was a widow lady. She struggled financially but always produced a good garden and supplemented her income by crocheting a few items for folks who were kind enough to buy them from her.

Summertime was always the best. If my pals, Jimmy or Charlie weren’t around to play army or cowboy and indians, I always seemed to find myself on Katie’s front porch by late afternoon. She had a couple of rockers and a porch swing that suffered from heavy use.

Before any porch sittin’ however, chores had to be done. Lawn mowing was a big job for Katie. She covered over an acre with a push mower and it was usually a two-afternoon process. Sometimes I helped but as I look back, I now realize that I probably didn’t help enough.

By the second day of mowing, the first day’s grass clippings had sufficiently dried to be used for a special purpose.

Sitting on the porch as twilight approached and cooling off after a hard afternoon’s work was a pleasant experience, but only if you were able to keep the gnats and mosquitoes at bay.

Katie had a unique approach to insect control. Smoke would suffice to keep those little buggers away and partially dried grass clippings were perfect to maintain a nice white haze over the porch and the immediate lawn. Katie kept two slop jars on her porch and when it was time to “sit a spell”, I would gather up sufficient clippings to fill the enameled pots and set a slow burn. One slop jar would be placed at each end of the porch. If you don’t know what a slop jar is, ask somebody that’s older than dirt - like me.

Today when I see an old slop jar in an antique store, I immediately think of Katie – probably not the way she would have preferred to be remembered but I doubt she would have minded too much. And the smell of burning grass brings back a memory of a slow, peaceful 1960’s twilight listening to the steady creak of a rocker, the hum of the box fan just inside the screen door and the whine of an old farmer’s decrepit pickup as it fades away with the sunset on an old country road.