I found a flyswatter to be much kinder to my hands than using them for paddling my brood of children, especially the boys who wore heavy jeans. In an extreme case, I used it on the girls too. Back then, you could paddle children without being turned into DHS. I still think a good paddling would help many of the unruly offspring we have nowadays.


We were plagued with flies during the summer months, because we had so many pigs and other barn yard animals at the time. With so many children swinging the doors open all day long, we got our share of flies visiting the house.


One day, the house was full of flies and I could not find any of my five swatters. I asked the kids if anyone had seen any of them. Of course, no one had so I shooed the flies out with a dish towel the best I could. A few days, after I had questioned all of the little angels, I decided to turn the mattresses in the girl’s room.

When I turned the mattress on Susan's bed over … alas, I found all five swatters tucked neatly between the mattress and box springs! I had to chuckle at her ingenuity as she knew I did not turn the mattresses very often. I can not remember if I just “yelled” at her, or used a fly swatter on her bottom for deceiving me.