Pre-Industrial Insect Repellant per Youngblood

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Pre-Industrial Insect Repellant per Youngblood

Postby George Collins » Wed Jun 12, 2013 10:47 pm

We were shelling some contender beans earlier today. During such times, Youngblood's porch is the designated gathering-up spot. Without fail, he goes into story telling mode and is ripe for how-to questions.

Seeing my opportunity, I jumped.

"Youngblood, back b'fore they had skeeter dope, how'd y'all go about fishin over on'th'creek without gettin toted off."

Without missin a beat he started shellin the next bean and said, "We'd take an ol burlap sack. Roll I up tight, like in a cylinder, and set one end of it afire. When it got t'going pretty good, you'd smother the fire out and that thing'd smolder for a long time. Just set it down beside you is typically all you'd haf t'do. Sometimes, if they got pretty bad, you'd pick it up and fan it around your head."

Knowing that my kids had recently experimented with burning dried cow manure after seeing something akin to that on a Ray Mears show, I asked, "That sounds like dried cow manure might serve the same purpose. Did y'all ever use that."

"Your Uncle Everett did. That's all he would use. Said it worked better."

(As an aside here, Uncle Everett really ain't really my uncle. It's just what young white folks called respected black elders in the old South, from which I come.)

During the course of the bean shelling operation, Youngblood also told me that if you want to locate a hive of bees, put just a dab of sulphur on the back of a few honey bees and when a sulphur adorned bee returns to the hive, "all manner of hell brakes loose." Then all you have to do to find the hive is follow the commotion.
"Solve world hunger, tell no one." "The, the, the . . . The Grinch!"

"If you can't beat them, bite them."
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Re: Pre-Industrial Insect Repellant per Youngblood

Postby Lollykoko » Thu Jun 13, 2013 10:35 pm

Well darn it George, I have two truck loads of horse manure and not a cow patty in the batch!
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