WASPS

WASPS

I have a good healthy fear of flying pests with stingers. I've been stung a few times in my life by wasps and bees. Its not really that bad once its done. My fear goes back to an incident in my childhood.

When I was a youngster, we didn't have a clothes washer or dryer. Built into the basement of our house was a triple stationary tub arrangement. You put hot water and soap in the first tub. You agitated your clothes with a wooden pole. There was also a washboard for getting out the hard to get soil. The second tub was full of cold water for the rinse. The third tub had a manual ringer attached to it that squeezed water out of the clothes and into the tub. The clothes came out of the ringer and were put in a basket for hanging. Washed clothes had to be hung on a line to dry.

We eventually got an "automatic" washer with ringer attached. You put your clothes in the washer and it agitated them the way washers still work today. When you thought the clothes were clean, you emptied the soapy water and put in clean water for a rinse. Then, you pulled the pieces of clothing out one by one and fed them through a wringer attached to the washer that worked by electricity. My mother thought she had died and gone to heaven when we got this unit. Of course, the clothes still had to be hung on a clothes line for complete drying. This was done in the basement unless the weather was right, in which case they would be hung outside.

We had a couple of special metal poles set in concrete in the backyard for this purpose. Each of these had holes drilled in them so that you could easily run your clothes line or multiple lines through them. We also had several wooden poles that were called clothes props. These would hold up the clothes line high off of the ground on long runs between the metal poles and hooks that were attached to our back porch for that purpose.

One summer day, my mom was hanging clothes outside in the back yard. I was out there with her swinging my baseball bat. For some reason, I decided to take a good wack at one of the metal poles with my bat. I couldn't budge it but I sure made a nest of wasps angry who had made a home in it. Several of the creatures swarmed and headed for the first person they saw which happened to be my mother. They stung her several times around the eyes but didn't come after me at all. It was a traumatic experience for me and of course, my mother, too.