Our days usually started before sunup when the wind was light and the air cool. Dawn hovered on the horizon as we arrived at the airport, and Dad and I jumped out of the truck and began our routine. I’d flip on the electricity to the fuel pump, then pull the fuel hose over to the right wing of the airplane. With my right hand squeezing the nozzle, I’d drum my left-hand fingers on the wing, the taut fabric echoing and singing. Next I’d drag the hose over to the left wing and repeat the process.
While I fueled up, Dad would get out the county plat book and plan the first job. He was born and raised in this sleepy farming county and knew every farmer and every field within twenty miles. He’d run his eyes and fingers across the plat book like he was touching a score of sheet music for the symphony about to begin. Then he sorted and counted the poison needed for the job.
The plane was a Piper Pawnee D, a working airplane. It had a huge engine that carried two large tanks of fuel in each wing and one large tank of poison right behind the engine. This tank was molded around the pilot’s feet and knees to fill every square inch of the small cockpit. The plane’s one seat was bolted to the steel bars of the fuselage, and the pilot sat squeezed in among containers of poisonous and combustible liquid like a chicken in a factory-farm cage.
I’d kick the wooden blocks away from the wheels of the plane and go stand behind the right wing as Dad stood behind the left. Together, we’d push the airplane out of the hangar. The tires would crunch across the gravel for thirty feet and then hit smooth grass. We’d stop pushing and the plane came to a halt. Instinctively, we’d look to the horizon and see the sun staring hard above the cornfield to the east.
With the sun often came wind, which we watched closely all day. Too much wind and the poison would blow where it wasn’t supposed to, like onto a neighboring farmer’s field. Way too much wind and it wasn’t safe to fly. We’d look up at the windsock on the top of the pole at the edge of the landing strip. If everything was still A-OK, we’d start loading up.
When we sprayed dust or pellets, we’d carry a dozen fifty-pound bags over to the airplane, lift them onto the wing, and pour them into the tank, turning our faces as the dust billowed and filled the air. Then we’d try to roll up the empty bags without getting more dust on ourselves. When we sprayed liquid, we first filled the tank with a hundred or more gallons of water from the well nearby and then poured in the poison. It all splashed together, often up and out of the tank. This was the real stuff, concentrated broad-spectrum. “Attacks the nervous and respiratory system,” my dad said. “Instant knock down. That’s what you want. They breathe, they die.”
I used to know all the names and smells like a cabdriver knows streets — Sevin and Malathion are two that remain lodged in my memory. Some were perfumed or mixed with molasses so the bugs would take the bait. The ones meant to kill weeds also had a sweet, chemical odor. Others smelled like nothing else on Earth, just unique and murderous.
When we were done loading I’d stand back and watch as Dad took over. He’d circle the airplane, looking at all the nuts and bolts and cables, the cigarette between his teeth bobbing and dipping as he made his inspection. He was meticulous when it came to mechanics. After his safety check, he would climb up on the wing and throw his leg over into the cockpit, simultaneously flicking the morning’s last cigarette through the air. Then he would tap on the instrument panel gauges and a second later yell, “Clear!” I’d step away from the plane and yell back, “Clear!” With the flip of a switch the world was awash in wind and noise. I’d grab my cap as the propeller whirred and the grass flattened. He’d look over and give another A-OK sign before the airplane taxied away. Thirty seconds later, I’d see him climbing into the sky at the other end of the runway.
As the late-summer sun rose in the sky, the temperature soared. The bugs loved the heat and humidity. Japanese beetles were our most common target. When I was younger, my granddad would drive me out to the farm that was to be sprayed. After I turned sixteen and got my license, I drove Dad’s truck. If I got to the farm before he did, I’d sometimes walk through the cornfield and survey the infestation. In the worst cases, if I hit the cornstalks with my elbows, the beetles would rise in a cloud over my head. About the size of thumbtacks, Japanese beetles are black and gold with a tinge of red on their wings. I could hear their wings clicking and snapping as thousands of them took flight, then landed on the corn leaves several feet away.
Thirty minutes after Dad sprayed an apocalypse set in. The beetles would fall straight to the ground, or do these little half-fall, half-fly whirligigs, as gravity and poison took hold. I’d watch them die, lying on their backs, their tiny legs squirming in the air. Sometimes they covered the ground. Silence. And the spray didn’t just kill Japanese beetles. If an insect was smaller than my thumb, it was dead — bees, moths, grasshoppers, caterpillars. Everything.
We’d go through the same routines hour after hour, flying and driving all over the county. It was hard work, and by late afternoon we were tired. Still, before we wrapped up the day we would stand at the water pump at the airport and wash and wash and wash. We’d wash our hands, wash our heads, and take off our shirts and wash and wring them dry. Dad would sometimes hold the hose and spray me down, head to foot. Our work done, we’d sit on the tailgate of the pickup and chat about the day’s events — bugs and poison and weather.
My dad died a few years ago at age sixty-seven. It wasn’t the poison or the speed that got him, both of which he pursued until the end. It was the cigarettes, the crimson point, bobbing and dipping. I know he accepted the trade-off — not that he discussed it, or would have. James Dean versus Willy Loman. Dean died in a blazing, speeding crash and was one of his heroes. Loman whined and suffered. A no-brainer.
I have at least fifty pictures of my dad — baby-blue eyes, always smiling, cigarette in hand or clenched in his teeth, smoke curling — and he is always, always, looking straight at the camera.
About a year and a half after Dad died, the county where I live in Colorado had an outbreak of West Nile virus. The virus migrated in a huge swath across the U.S. in 2003, but for some reason northern Colorado got hit harder than most places, and my town, Fort Collins, harder yet. Several people had died, dozens were in the hospital, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, were home sick.
Many residents wrote letters to the editor and went to city council meetings. “People are dying!” they exclaimed. “Something must be done!” Mosquitoes transmitted the virus, and so our city and county leaders called in a crop-duster.
We were advised to stay in our homes, to close all the doors and windows, to keep pets inside, and not to be alarmed. The spraying was scheduled to occur on two consecutive nights a week for two weeks. The plane would start at one end of the city and methodically crisscross to the other. The airplane was much bigger than my dad’s, and the crop-duster did not have a flagman. My old job had been phased out with the advent of satellite-guided global positioning systems.
By this time in my life most of my friends and colleagues were environmentalists. Many of them were concerned about the poison that would rain down from the sky. Some ranted and raved. Several left town during the spraying.
On the first night, I was sitting in front of the TV watching Seinfeld when I happened to glance out the window and saw the beacon under the plane’s wing flashing red against the dark sky. I muted the TV and stuck my head out the window. The plane was about two hundred feet from the ground and had just passed over my house. Memories flooded in — the roaring engine, the hissing mist. My heart skipped a beat as I thought about the pilot, the poison, and the spinning propeller. Then I waited for what I knew would come next — that unmistakable smell.
Gary Wockner, PhD, is a scientist and conservationist based in Colorado. Follow him on Twitter, @GaryWockner. Learn more at savethecolorado.org