We had not cleared 10,000 feet yet as we climbed up from Orlando airport runway. I could see from my vantage point of a window seat some large sprayers spraying something on the fields way below. It was not the long water distributors. I figured it must be fertilizers. But the mist of spray from the nozzle on top stirred some really old memory cells deep in my neocortex.

I was in third grade then. Dad had brought home a weird looking contraption. And then he proceeded to set it to work. My sister and I sat around him to see what magic was going to take place. My brother was too young.

Exasperated by the onslaught of all the bugs, pests and mosquitoes that monsoon season, dad had taken it upon himself to institute some proactive measures. There is only so much of slapping and missing mosquitoes that he could take.

He carefully opened the small, circular tin can and poured a fluid from another bigger tin can. The smell of the fluid oddly was very attractive to me and my sister. We were not too sure why the mosquitoes would flee from such a nice aroma.

Then dad went on to the screw the top of the cylindrical can with the long handle and then proceeded to show us how the contraption worked. He would pull the piston and push it. The whole thing would make a sucking noise during the pull and spit out a whole mist of the insecticide during the push.

He then took us around the house spraying all the corners of the house and everywhere he suspected bugs might be lurking. (Incidentally, in our house, that would mean pretty much the whole house).

That suction and spraying function caught the curiosity and imagination of two young kids that day. Whenever dad was not around, we would go around massacring the bugs with what that time we would have considered a weapon of mass destruction!

I am not sure whatever happened to that bug sprayer.

But after a lot of search on the internet, I found some vintage pictures of the exact Flit Bug Sprayer we had back in early 1970s.

Did any one of you grow up with this too?