Some years ago, my husband and I took a trip to Panama, and of course we visited the canal. Of particular interest to me was finding my great-uncle James (nickname Jinks) Jervey’s name, as he had been an engineer on the canal building project in about 1903. Sure enough, the list of names in the museum included his. I took a picture to show my father, and we went to watch some ships go through.
As one apparently does in Panama, I started thinking about mosquitos. I recalled a story about Uncle Jinks’ experience on the canal, told to me by my father. Uncle Jinks was tall, maybe six foot two, and the mosquito-net enclosure that he slept in wasn’t quite long enough. One night he woke up with his feet completely numb. He realized that the soles of his bare feet were in contact with the net. When he pulled his feet away, he left behind two thick, black, perfectly foot-shaped clusters of mosquitos. Apparently, he did not come down with malaria, but I know a lot of others did.
Mosquitos! I live in Alaska, where they are mockingly referred to as the state bird, and you can buy cartoon T-shirts of people being carried off by them. And I do remember that time in the spring of 1980, when I took the two-day bus ride from Anchorage to the ferry terminal in Haines and spent the night (illegally) in an open gazebo in the park in Haines Junction. I woke up with my eyes almost swollen shut.
Even so, my most epic memories of mosquitos come from my childhood in Virginia. Of note is that time my sisters and cousins and I found ourselves camping out at Sandbridge. We must have had a tent, but it wasn’t secure, because we were tormented from the get-go by enterprising mosquitoes, whining and whirring and looking for an opening. My father used to say that when they approached, they were crooning, “I’m your cousin, I’m your cousin,” but after they bit you, they would run off squealing, “No kin! No kin!” He also was fond of saying that the Lord made mosquitos, but the devil made them bite.
But I digress. The way Laura tells it, she had finally, just barely, drifted off to sleep in our makeshift tent, when I suddenly screamed at the top of my not-inconsequential lungs, “Darn it, mosquito! Go away!”
Laura moaned, “Evelyn! I had just gotten to sleep!”
Whereupon I snarled in return, “Shut up and let me sleep!”
Hmmm. I have spent half a century wondering how I should get even with Laura for that time we were making butter creams and she dipped a tiny, boiled potato in the bitter chocolate and fooled me into biting into it. But it kinda looks like I had it coming.
I am sorry about the boiled potato.
Fret not! It was a stroke of unparalleled genius.
A train of thought. Uncle Jinx was one of the 6 Jervey brothers, and they averaged 6 feet so their mother called them her 36 feet of sons. Uncle Darrell, who owned St. Helens, was the shortest, about 5’8″. When we were replacing plaster in the dog run hall, we peeled off the wall paper and found where all the brothers had marked their heights on the wall, after they were fully grown. Uncle Darrell, the shortest, had put his mark way up on the top of the wall near the ceiling. We carefully removed that section of plaster, and it is still in the attic.
I had forgotten this story–would love to see it when I come down.
Well, you would have to climb the same ladder Dollop did when escaping from me (written about in one of your previous blogs) and wiggle in through the same window into the hot dusty and wasp occupied attic!
It would have been worth a try!
Actually what I regret is not having a camera ready to capture your expression when you bit into the unsweetened chocolate covered potato! We could have made millions.
Indeed, we could have been rich.
I think I learned a great deal about mosquitoes from those dearly remembered camping trips. These days, at an outdoor summer picnic, I will be the weirdo wearing a hat with a brim, buttoned up collar, long sleeves, long pants, and boots. I will also be more comfortable than any one else there.
And the smartest!