The Day My Mother Went to War with the Wasps

Memories of a Little Cottage in Southwestern Ohio, August 1949

There are certain memories from childhood that never leave us, no matter how many years pass. They remain tucked away somewhere in the corners of our minds, waiting for something to bring them back to life.

One of mine involves an outhouse, a bucket of boiling water, a swarm of angry wasps, and my mother.

It happened on a sunny August afternoon in 1949, when I was a very young boy living with my family in a little cottage at the very end of the last road in a mostly agricultural town in southwestern Ohio.

We were not wealthy people. In fact, by today’s standards, we had very little. But we had a home, a backyard, and a whole world of childhood adventures waiting just outside our door.

Our little bungalow stood beside a farmer’s enormous field. Some years he planted corn, and other years he grew hay. An old rustic fence separated his property from ours, and a row of red haw trees lined the narrow alleyway between that fence and our house.

Near the back fence stood a tall black walnut tree, its branches reaching toward the summer sky.

Our backyard was a wonderful place for a little boy.

There was a pigpen where my pet pig lived, and a goat who wandered around eating grass and occasionally head-butting anybody foolish enough to turn his back on him.

That goat was a character. He seemed to believe the entire backyard belonged to him, including the people who happened to be walking through it.

And then there was our outhouse.

Yes, an honest-to-goodness outdoor privy.

Indoor plumbing was something other people enjoyed. When nature called at our house, you walked down the backyard path to a little wooden building and hoped there wasn’t anything unpleasant waiting inside.

One August afternoon, there was.

I had gone to use the outhouse when I noticed that a colony of wasps had built a nest beneath its eaves.

Now, I might have been young, but I wasn’t stupid.

I knew enough about wasps to understand that sharing an outhouse with them was a mighty poor arrangement.

So I went and told my mother.

My mother belonged to that generation of women who didn’t spend much time worrying about how to solve a problem. They simply rolled up their sleeves and solved it.

She took an old aluminum bucket, filled it with about a gallon of well water, and heated it until it was boiling.

Then she marched down the path toward the outhouse.

There was no protective clothing, no fancy insect spray, and certainly no professional exterminator.

There was just my mother, her bucket, and her determination to reclaim the family toilet.

She approached the outhouse and threw that boiling water directly onto the wasp nest.

Well, those wasps didn’t appreciate her hospitality.

Suddenly, the air was filled with furious insects, and my mother found herself facing an enemy considerably more determined than she had anticipated.

She turned and ran.

And those wasps came after her!

Down the backyard path she flew, past the familiar sights of our little country home, with an angry swarm in hot pursuit.

Somehow, she reached the house and got safely inside.

And the most remarkable part?

She never received a single sting.

Not one.

I can only imagine what those wasps thought about the whole business, but I suspect they considered it an unprovoked act of war.

Today, more than three-quarters of a century later, I sometimes find myself thinking about that little cottage at the end of the road.

I remember the farmer’s field, the old fence, the red haw trees, and that magnificent black walnut tree standing watch over our backyard.

I remember my pet pig and that ill-tempered goat.

And I remember my mother, armed with nothing more than an aluminum bucket of boiling well water, taking on an entire colony of wasps because her little boy needed to use the toilet.

There were no smartphones in those days. No internet. No air-conditioned shopping malls. No endless parade of electronic gadgets to entertain a child.

Our entertainment came from the world around us, from the animals in our backyard, from the changing seasons, and sometimes from the unexpected adventures of everyday life.

We didn’t have much money, but we had things that money couldn’t necessarily buy.

We had the freedom to explore, the wonder of discovering something new, and the security of knowing that when trouble appeared, Mother would do something about it.

Even if that meant declaring war on a nest of wasps.

I suppose that’s what I miss most about those long-ago days.

Not the outhouse, certainly.

And definitely not the wasps.

But the simplicity of it all. The closeness to the land. The little family cottage. And the remarkable courage of an ordinary mother who never thought of herself as courageous.

Sometimes the smallest moments of childhood become the biggest memories of a lifetime.

And sometimes all it takes to make a memory last seventy-seven years is a little wooden outhouse, a bucket of boiling water, and a mother who could outrun a swarm of angry wasps.