Some classic TV commercials and childhood memories was brought to mind recently when my niece in the Midwest told me about a visit to an acquaintance’s house. She said the place stank so bad that she was afraid to sit down anywhere and also afraid of what might find her. ROACHES!!! I know, I know. I dislike those type of critters also.

My childhood friend and I used to laugh when Muhamad Ali would appear in TV commercials and declare to someone stomping their feet and dancing around roaches. Ali would say, “That’s No Way To Kill Roaches!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXzRmX9eK7k  And roaches to me was no laughing matter. As meticulously clean as my mother was, we had a roach-problem. I’m sure it was the area we lived in of the South. For some reason we could never get rid of our roaches and neither could the houses on both sides of our house. They were night roaches! My room was in the back of the house and I would freak-out when one came near me when I was watching TV. The kitchen was a different story. Turn the lights on and WOW it was like a different world. You could not leave anything on the stove, table or kitchen counter. Any treats I had would go into the fridge where things were safe. I actually thought roaches were a part of everyone’s life. But when life’s journey took me to other places I saw roaches were not a part of everyone’s life. Roaches had become just a memory…a bad dream.

After my childhood nightmare with roaches I have only fleetingly encountered them. Once in Southern California I stayed with a couple of guys for one-night while my new apartment was being readied. These guys had a roach-problem. But their roach-problem was because every fast-food container they had was not disposed of…just thrown about the floor wherever they finished it. Take about slovenly! Roaches crawled on anything moving and in all the food containers. I think I fumigated myself and anything I had with me after camping-out on that floor. The second time I encountered roaches was in Florida where the flying giant Palmetto bugs terrorized everyone….but they were mostly outside.

Like my niece, the only other time I was confronted with roaches was a visit to someone’s place in Harlem, New York. They were good people who lived in a high-rise building with hundreds of others. The rent-controlled place was immaculate and beautiful but full of roaches, like I had never seen. There were roaches in the sofa I was sitting on. They crawled over me as I sat. They were everywhere!!! You could not escape. It was like a Horror movie. I had to act normal…as if it was normal…so I wouldn’t offend. Yeah, that was No Way to Kill Roaches and certainly no-way to live either. A friend in Connecticut just told me today his yard is filled with rat snakes and a few copperheads…..that’s certainly no way to live. OMG!!!