Fortaleza

My Peace Corps service, training plus overseas assignment in the Amazon of Brasil (as they spell it), was a commitment, and an adventure, of some two and a half years. I would have gone anywhere the Peace Corps chose. After all, part of my purpose for joining was NOT going to Vietnam. Looking back after over half a century, I am supremely happy I ended up being assigned to Brasil and not Nigeria…which almost happened. But that is another story….

At the end of the two-year assignment in the Amazon, in October, 1968, all of us who trained together at Marquette University in Milwaukee assembled again in the beautiful coastal city of Forteleza on the northeast coast of Brasil for a week of debriefing. Room and board were paid in the form of a per diem. Most of us stayed at the hotel recommended by the local Peace Corps staff. But not Dave Houts and me.

The per diem was enough to pay for the recommended hotel and cheap meals but was not enough to pay for our beer, too. So Dave and I made other arrangements.

We managed to find a hotel much more in line with our economic situation. Depending on how accurate my aging memory is, the cost for room and board, two meals a day, was about $1.75 American, leaving a tidy sum for beer.

As it happened, the place was also a bargain for the several prostitutes who lived there and whom we quickly befriended. In my life, no $1.75 ever returned more value.

Well, as they say, you get what you pay for.

Shortly after returning home to Nashville, I discovered, to my horror and embarrassment, that my $1.75 per day had also included an infestation of lice.

This was a situation that had to be dealt with one way or another. Pondering my options, I realized that I was too embarrassed to share my situation with my family doctor, Dr Peirce Ross. After all, he was my mother’s doctor, too, and I had no confidence at that time in the idea of doctor/patient confidentiality. 

I decided to try self-medication. I went to my neighborhood Walgreen’s Pharmacy. There it was the same as with Dr Ross but I was even more embarrassed to confide in a stranger pharmacist. So, with studied nonchalance, I slowly ambled along the multiple aisles scanning everything from Band-Aids to plastic frisbees to lip balm but found no product that would, by the information on its label, address my particular problem. I ended up leaving empty-handed.

Obviously, my problem persisted. 

Finally, I went to Hart Hardware. There I bought a can of Black Flag Bug Bomb Spray, guaranteed or your money back. After a couple of judicious spritzes on the affected area, my misguided, but memorable, adventure came at last to a happy conclusion.

Today, all these decades later, every time I have need of a bug spray to solve more mundane problems than the one I confronted in 1968, out of loyalty to the quality and efficacy of Black Flag Bug Bomb, I look for it at Hart Hardware… so far to no avail. Evidently, the company has gone out of business. Still, I am glad it was there when I needed it.

by Rob Orr