We had an Edison Victrola all during our growing up years. It was the kind that you cranked and there were cylinder tubes that you put on and then placed the needle on the tube that went around and around. We had a number of cylinders that had music and funny scrips on them.
One that stands out in my mind and was quite funny, and it went something like this - - - -
Title of the record was-- HOW TO KILL A BUG!
The man on the record described how to kill a bug and said very slowly in a long drawn out voice and tone , "You take the bug and open the bug's mouth and you shovel this bug medicine down the bug's throat, After you do this you take the bug and you STOMP ON THE BUG--AND THE BUG IS DEAD!!!!!" There might be more to it than what I described, but that is the jest of the record. The way he was able to describe it in such a fashion that it was really funny.
Dad had a problem with Chinch bugs and these bugs were quite a thing when the land was dry and lacked rain. They would start in one field and then move on to another field after they destroyed the crops in the first field. I remember that my dad saw they were in another field next to our land and he dug a shallow ditch and poured black tar in the ditch. When they tried to come into our field, they would have to go through the ditch and the tar substance would kill the chinch bugs and saved our crops. I must have been around six or seven years of age and remember this ditch and the dark tar that he poured in it. The bugs must have crawled from one field to another and not able to fly to the other field. In 1933 the land was parched because of lack of rain and I think this was the year that he had to make the ditch.
Wisdom of the day--Preventive medicine is always better than wait until one has to experience the consequences of waiting.
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2 comments:
Hi,
My dad told me about your blog, and I've enjoyed getting a new perspective on my grandfather's immediate family and early years. It certainly sounds like a different world back then!
Mark--I'm glad you enjoy reading about the "good ole days"! As you can imagine some of them weren't quite so good, but we survived. I have had fun writing about some of these old time memories.
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