They wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t safe, would they?

I’ve written a couple of BLOGS on serious, potentially offensive, topics recently. I will continue to post those hoping to bring discussion and recognition to all views. I don’t want this site to live solely in the darkness that political discussion has become, so I’m changing the channel today.

Most boomers from the cities and suburbs remember “The Mosquito Man,” as we called him in the shadows of Chicago.

The Mosquito Man was a necessary evil, I guess.

He would drive through my little town in a specially equipped truck that spewed a poisonous concoction out of the back. This formula was advertised to kill mosquitos but, for all I know, he might have just been as big a con artist as the Harold Hill was in The Music Man. The spray might have been harmless to mosquitos, but that’s not what this blog is about.

I want to write about what fun it was to run behind that truck that was billowing white, cloudy, poison into our neighborhoods and homes! It wasn’t just me and my neighborhood pals, by the time the truck got to my block there were fifty to a hundred fellow baby boomers running behind it. Every kid that could run, roller skate, or ride a bike was in on the chase. The purpose wasn’t to catch him, he didn’t go that fast. The game was to stay behind him and enjoy the feeling of being in the clouds while still firmly planted on terra firma. We’d run behind it until someone in our group would point out that we were too far from home. We would simply peel off and new kids would join in. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if part of the driver’s job was to figure out where the kids who followed him back to his garage were from and return them.

On one of our first adventures I recall hearing my mom say to my dad, “Pete, the kids are running in that poison, call them back.” I heard the beginning of my dad saying, “Honey, they wouldn’t be allowed to spray it if it was dangerous to humans.” On that night we were too far gone for dad to have stopped us anyway. Mom was probably right. Maybe a part of the cause of this cancer culture we live in is that a large percentage of the boomers who now suffer from cancer made a habit of chasing small trucks spewing poison.

The odd thing was that I don’t recall any reports of injuries or illnesses. How could that be? Enormous amounts of wild kids racing in a poisonous fog so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. To make it more dangerous some kids were on bikes, some were on foot. I never saw any on roller skates- but then again the fog was so thick I couldn’t see much of anything. It wasn’t unusual to trip over a garden hose, shrub, run into a tree or fellow traveler. I did it often, brushed myself off, and got back in the chase. Maybe Frank Sinatra was singing about that when he sang, “I pick myself up and get back in the race, that’s life…” Maybe not, but I digress.

I just thought it might be fun to return to those fun, carefree, days when we would stop a street baseball game in mid inning to chase a truck spraying poison.

Did you chase The Mosquito Man?

Please share your experiences in the comment section