Column: Following the fogger — a fond childhood memory
By Phil Burgess
I’ve posted this article in the Courier Press a number of times previously, but so many people have asked me to re-share it that I decided to do another updated version.
Anyway, all I can say is, boy, am I ever lucky!
I grew up in the 1950s and early 60s living in a real-life “Leave it to Beaver” neighborhood here in Prairie du Chien. And just like Wally and “The Beav,” my friends and I were always finding something “neat” going on around our block to get involved with. Of course, there were no such things as smartphones, computers or video games back then. So you had to rely on your own ingenuity for entertainment.
One of the most exciting things that could happen to an impressionable small-town kid back then was getting to see “The Fogger.” During the summer months, when the mosquitoes got bad, attempts were made to reduce their numbers by chemically fogging the entire city. This was done on calm evenings so that the fog would have a chance to penetrate around buildings, yards and trees and be more effective at killing the biting pests.
The fogger was a city dump truck equipped with a device mounted in the dump box, which atomized and sprayed a concoction of what I believe was a mixture of diesel fuel and DDT. The mixture spewed from a big pipe that stuck out of the back of the truck (this was a common mosquito-control practice nationwide back then).
The fog emitted was very dense, white and had a perfumy odor. Residents would scurry to close their windows as the fogger approached since the slowly dissipating vapors quickly penetrated indoors and lingered for hours afterward outside. The machine emitted a great roar like an enraged dragon and could be heard blocks away. The chemical cloud banks it produced roiled hundreds of feet into the sky — an impressive sight for young eyes to behold!
On summer evenings, when we kids would be outside playing, someone would suddenly yell out, “The Fogger!” Everyone would immediately drop whatever they were doing, hop on their bicycles and follow the truck as if it were some magical pied piper proceeding through the neighborhood, much to the chagrin of the police and our parents. Riding in the blind through the dense fog on our Schwinn’s and English Racers was a great excitement for us. Back in the 1950s, no one gave a second thought of how incredibly toxic DDT would later prove to be. All that concerned us was zooming in and out of that fog bank and having fun.
On one occasion while we were biking blindly behind our revered “Great Fogger God,” the truck suddenly stopped, catching us off guard. One of my friends — I believe it was one of the Bowery Boys — didn’t notice and smacked into the back of the truck on his bike, flew over the handlebars and actually got his head stuck in the fogging pipe. It was just like watching the Three Stooges.
Thankfully, he wasn’t hurt, but this was one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen in my whole life. We were laughing so hard we nearly wet our pants. To this day, I still love relating this story to others. Along with playing baseball, horseshoes, and “Annie Annie Over,” the wondrous childhood adventures of chasing The Fogger remain among the fondest memories of those “boomers” who grew up on Mondell Court and St. Lo Drive seven-plus decades ago.
