When I was a girl I would travel cross country from Pennsylvania to visit my mom’s family here in California kind of like an annual pilgrimage back to our homeland. Let me tell you that four kids and your mom on a Greyhound bus for three days is all kinds of awesome. There was always fun to be had visiting Grandma and Grandpa, Aunts and Uncles and my Great-Grandparents. Austa and Chester lived on a itty, bitty bit of land in Merced and being a farmer from Missouri, my great-grandpa farmed the you know what out of that land. He even cultivated a banana tree that produced palatable fruit that got him in the local Merced Sun-Star paper back in the day. He was proud of what he could do with that dusty old property. He was a hard working, Missouri born and bred man who prided himself on the fruits of his daily labor. The last year that I was to spend a summer with him I was twelve…a rather smart-alecky, bored twelve year old. As much as I loved Austa and Chester I was bored beyond belief staying at their place in dusty, old Merced…I was twelve!

my great-grandfather, my borther, Randy and me...if you must judge the epic cat-eye glasses and WTF is that haircut of mine, judge my Mommy Dearest. I blame the lack of meds that she should have been on.

Still I managed to entertain myself. I found some amazing, interesting, something-I-bet-my-grandmother-never-ever-saw French post cards in my great-grandfather’s bureau while helping Austa with the laundry because my mom said I was good to help her. I choked down okra fritters which I know is a Southern staple but oh gawd not something I ever really want to eat again…pretty please. I “taught” Chester how to play gin rummy. I know that I was the one to teach him because I won every single time. I was his favorite great grandchild because I was the first so of course he would let me win every time. I also amused myself with my quickly aging great grandfather’s new “job” now that he was too old to keep up his property the way that he wanted to as the gentleman farmer from Missouri. In the late summer, early fall here in the Central Valley the flies are beyond out of control. They are freakin-every-where! I know they are one of God’s precious living creatures but they are beyond annoying. My great-grandfather, Chester Caudle, was THE fly killer of the sleepy town of Merced back in the day. As age began to betray his body he gave up the back-breaking work of growing amazing fruits and vegetables beyond abundance and took to his new calling of eradicating his fair city of the common housefly from his favorite chair in front of the picture window of their living room. Without fail, immediately after a quick breakfast, he would take his position, feigning reading the daily paper, or playing gin rummy with me and would be actually slaying the nasty houseflies with precision that compares to a stealth Navy Seal…really. Those damn flies never saw what was coming. At the end of the day, Chester would line up the carcases and take a body count which he would compare to previous days…weeks…months. It was all about the yield for him, the aged gentleman farmer. Being the typical twelve year old girl I was grossed out yet drawn to knowing the daily stats.  To this day, every time I see a fly swatter, I think of Chester. God I loved that dear old man and the summers I spent with him!

Fast forward nearly four decades later, flies remain a huge, nasty, irritating problem here in the Central Valley…even more of a problem here under the new Big Top. Oh my gawd, they are everywhere! Perhaps it is the local farm that borders our home. Nevertheless, they are nasty, gross and disgusting and must die. I know. They are God’s creation and serve a purpose and blah, blah, blah…but not under the Big Top. It is because of these truths that I have become my great grandfather.

I imagine he is chuckling because yes, I am having probably more fun than I should be with this weapon. So is my darling husband…and one of my darling daughters.

Yes, Chester is smiling down upon us all right now because somehow, someway, someday…if not today, perhaps tomorrow or even decades from now the Caudles will slay the flies of the Central Valley.

:::cue the inspirational music as I raise my fly swatter to the skies:::

Over the top much?

You must not live here in the hot, dusty, fly-infested Central Valley!