While I sew, I listen to 107.3 FM, The Mountain. The disc jockeys play 80s, 90s and contemporary songs—the demographic being baby boomers, 30-somethings, all the while targeting the marketer’s dream, 20 year olds. One song currently on the everyday roster is Counting Crow’s remake of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi. Written in 1970, the song was well ahead of the environmental curve in its plea for more paradise and fewer parking lots. “Hey farmer, farmer put away that DDT now, Give me spots on my apples but leave me the birds and the bees, Please!”

YouTube - Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell

YouTube - Counting Crows-"Big Yellow Taxi " Music Video

Among small town children in 1950s Nebraska, the popularity of a DDT spraying was second only to the Fourth of July and ice cream trucks. Hot, humid, Midwestern summers produced an annoying amount of mosquitoes, June bugs, box elder bugs, chiggers, and gnats. Community wisdom sent forth maintenance trucks equipped with wide bed sprayers to save the day. The trucks started out early in the morning, and hit the neighborhoods misting curbs, yards, and streets with a fine spray of Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane.

Older, faster kids on bikes flanked the sides of the trucks—tikes on trikes and training wheels brought up the rear. The best place to be was in the thick of it, lost in the fog. We rode along beside the greenish haze waving, cheering and beeping. Mothers came to the doors or stood on the sidewalks waving back as their children rode by engulfed in a toxic cloud.

These same mothers zealously guarded our safety while driving by the use of the vigilant railroad-crossing arm whenever the car screeched to a halt. Our flammable pajamas could have been used as tinder, helmets appeared only on Roller Derby night at the skating rink, a boy’s favorite toy was a BB gun or a rifle, girls of the era reveled in puttering with water, hot light bulbs and ungrounded Easy Bake Ovens, winters were spent ice skating unattended along the creek building bonfires as we went—no wonder we’re living longer. The weak were weeded out and only the tough remain.