Kills bugs!! Dead!!

So for fun, let’s just stay in the Adirondacks.  I think I will tell you about the time Mark and his dad decided the camp needed to be painted.  It was May or June of 1979, I think.  We had only been married for about 9 months.  Mark invited me to come hang out with him and his dad while they ‘spruced up’ the cabin.  It was a gorgeous, sunny day with just a hint of a breeze when we set out from Syracuse.  We stopped at McDonalds first so I could use the facilities and then we ate because we just wanted to.  Mark’s dad had been recovering from open-heart surgery that he had in Florida and was still a little bit weak.  But it didn’t stop him from working hard.  When we arrived at the cabin, Mark’s dad was already there and clearing the brush from the driveway area.  He was red as a beet and there were deer flies all over his clothes.  I told Mark I was going to stay in the car!  Once Mark’s dad convinced me that he had bug spray (I wondered if he was using it because it didn’t look like it was doing a very good job), I climbed reluctantly out of the vehicle.  Mark said he didn’t need any bug spray!  What a guy!  The cabin was a dark mud brown color.  It was the same color paint his dad was using again.  There were gallon buckets of this paint set around the building in a couple places with some brushes and rags.  The siding was that plank kind that soaks in every speck of paint.   We had giant hard, bristle brushes that we could use to grind the paint in all those little nooks and crannies to cover the surface.  Mark’s head was literally swarming with deer flies and black flies.  I kept brushing them away and shrieking.  I was doing a crazy-woman dance trying to scare away the bugs.  Mark’s dad entered the cabin and came out with a can of spray that said “CAUTION, DO NOT USE ON HUMAN SKIN” and soaks his head, his clothing, Mark and me with this stuff.  (Can you say nerve damage?).  Then he took a clear liquid that was in a metal flask like something from the prohibition era and poured it into the paint.  Homer (Mark’s dad) says  “it’s illegal to have this stuff in NYS, but he picked it up in Florida and it’s a potent insect killer/repellant.  It will help keep the critters away from the inside of the camp and outhouse.”  I wondered if he was drinking that stuff too because he had to be delirious.   So Mark and I helped Homer paint and paint and paint.  The smell from the paint mixed with the bug-killing liquid was toxic.  I had towels wrapped around my head and ears because the bugs were swarming around us, but they were afraid to land.  The sound of the buzzing African-sized mosquitoes and the black flies and deer flies was deafening.  I wrapped a scarf around my face to keep the smell from going in my nose.  I wore safety goggles, long sleeved shirts and pants and tucked them inside my gloves and socks.  There wasn’t a speck of skin exposed.  And then there was Mark and his dad.  They had their shirts off and were sweating so bad that the killer bug spray was no longer effective.  They were being eaten alive and I was there to witness it.  We painted in the hot sun (where was that breeze now?) for the entire day.  After we were done painting and it was just about dark, Mark’s dad treated us to a place in town that had a bathroom (first and foremost) and really delicious pizza!  Homer spent the night at the cabin.  I was very glad that Mark didn’t ask me if that was an option, we drove home.  All in all, it was a memory that I won’t ever forget and I do remember Mark and his dad talking and laughing throughout the entire day.  (Mostly at me.)  Mark purposefully worked on the same side of the building as his dad so they could talk while they painted.  Every once in awhile, when I am outside of my house and I see a spider crawling under the eaves, I think about travelling to Florida to get some of that bug-killing stuff!