Amidst attending school in the Ft. Clayton elementary school where I was a beaming and bright A student and running the streets and local hillocks for adventures came the DDT truck. It announced death to mosquitoes, biting flies, ticks and every other creeping, crawling insect it contacted including the fireflies of our wondrous delight. The oil slicks gleamed their multi-colored sheen as they drifted down the hilly streets.
David and I, helped by Margaret tried to protect the insects we liked, the fireflies and lady bugs and big beetles by capturing them as best we could and putting them in jars until the day after the evil truck passed...then they would be released to go on their way. Little did we realize they were being released into a dead zone of built up DDT that would kill them, albeit slowly, anyway. We felt like heroes and rescuers of our little friends as they were released back to their shortened lives.
You could hear the low thrum, thrum, thrum of the diesel engine and the mad cheers of the throngs of kids behind it as it made it's way through our paradise. From blocks away the cheers and yips and yells as kids were drenched in the aerosol spray from it's spray rig boom.
The kids gleamed too, high from the vapor and equally poisoned by the chemical, their brains dancing in the street amidst the dying bugs as they floated away in the stream, dead, inert, gone. Oh we were all "forbidden" to chase the evil truck, many swats to our rear ends took the place of the fine run...temporarily at least.
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