You have my utmost respect Danny. Your formative years were most certainly made up of hard and dangerous work. I don't do crop spraying with any of those chemicals as most of them have been banned for the reasons you have stated. We do use BT on spruce bud worms but it is not dangerous to humans. And, we now auger the fertilizer into the hopper instead of humping the bags like you did.
I did my share of farm chores and hauling hay bales, about 60 lbs, but you have my respect Danny.
Thanks Roger.
My exposure to dangerous chemicals and hard manual labor was the complete naïveté of an unsupervised young man, meandering through the minefield most refer to as "life".
I don't recall actually mixing BT, but I think aerial spraying of BT began after I was already out of it and into the AF.
I did neglect to mention DDT... it was a favorite in the mid-late 60s. But, the government sprayed DDT on our neighborhoods as far back as I can recall... To try to control/eradicate mosquitos.
I was very lucky to come out the other side of adolescence, alive, in good health and in possession of all appendages. I made "good" money, for an uneducated laborer, once I found my way into the really dangerous stuff. Much better than my 13 year old $.50/hour wage for bucking 100lb bags of potatoes.
But, one of my peers, wasn't so fortunate. "Poison Eddie" was two years my senior and was so named, guess why? He probably spent most of his formative years in a hospital bed. The company paid medical, for poisoning incidents... They also assigned poisoning patients to
unpaid leave. Eddie died before he could be drafted.
I like to think I was more careful than Eddie, but who knows... Once I realized the potential ramifications of my naïveté, I have always had a nagging expectation of a penny dropping... I quit a 22 year, 2-pack/day cigarette habit, Edit: 35 (not 36) years ago this month... But, I STILL fully expect lung cancer at some point... mainly because of the chemical exposures. I'm ~14 years post prostate cancer diagnosis... so far, that's all.
Of course, flying in the "dirty" hopper of a Stearman Biplane was just another of my poor decisions. But, it was fun nonetheless!! The dogfights, between Jack-n-Off Rye and Screwy Louie (the two lead pilots) were legendary and quite real, from the hopper.
The company offered to pay all expenses, to teach me to fly and obligate me to fly for them. But, I didn't do college, so no deferments... I joined the USAF before I was drafted and learned to write computer software and served in support positions. Once I retired, I made some really good money, for 23 years, primarily as a contractor (Software Developer and Software Engineer) for many civilian entities, and built my own very nice retirement. In the game of life, I think I was very fortunate to land, perhaps, the best Air Force job available... In, at the time, an up-and-coming technology!!
Oh, I almost forgot, while preparing to start Tech School, the AF got way behind on their class schedules... Future programmers were reassigned to either combat medic or food service. I was pulling KP when I was told to report to my programming class on Monday morning. So, another win for naïveté!!
In retrospect, I'll always have a modicum of "Survivors' Guilt", for serving in support positions, while true heroes like you were out in the jungle, putting you lives on the line every day and night.
YOU will always have my utmost respect Roger.
Thank you for the nice things you said.
