JOY ALONG THE WAY: REMEMBER THE COLORS OF SPRING

A jar of marbles makes an interesting pattern when reflected through a caleidoscope.

Charlie Mungle carves patterns in some of his kaleidoscopes.

When the mind, turning on its axis along with planet Earth, comes 'round to the spring season, certain "word chips" light up, momentarily, on the "Big Mental Memory Board, then fade away. One has to snatch at them quickly if he wants to think on them, for some of the words and their personal historical function are fading into history.

Four such words came into near focus recently and I made them out to be blue vitriol and Paris green.

Ask any school child, semi-adult or even mature adult for the meaning and, unless chemistry majors, you'll probably get guesses all the way from new spring fashion colors to names of cough syrup. Maybe code words for -- Interpol.

Blue vitriol was getting very hazy in my mind, except -- for the vaguely remembered fact that we burned it in our house in my early years, in the spring, to get rid of bugs.

I don't know what bugs were thus condemned. I remember none in the house, not even roaches. But with cats, hounds, cows, horses, chickens, pigs, mice, I can imagine that bugs did get inside the house, especially from the cats and dogs.

Nowadays one can get a spray can of killer stuff for every sort of stray bug inside the house -- roaches, ants, flies, fleas, carpet beetles, moths, silverfish, etc. We had lye soap, sticky fly strips and blue vitriol.

I had to punch some outside-the-mind buttons such as the dictionary and encyclopedia to remind myself, or even learn for the first time, what blue vitriol was, or still"is.

All I remember of blue vitriol was that sometimes in the spring, one room after another was closed off and we were not to enter because "blue vitriol was burning there," and "it was poisonous." Both of the cautions were given with beady-eyed warnings. Scared me.

I don't remember a first burning in connection with the blue vitriol. Was it done some other way? We were terribly careful about fires burning anywhere because we were miles away from any fire department with crooked, rocky roads that almost defied horse and wagon, let alone a big fire truck. We were more scared of fires than bugs. Anyway, the blue crystals, when heated, turned to a white powder, and somewhere in the process any bugs inside that room were supposed to make their demise.

As for Paris green, first cousin to blue vitriol because they both have as an ancestor, copper, I was allowed to handle that although it was as poisonous as blue vitriol, having arsenic acid added to it, so the knowledge book says. This is the product with which we fought the fat potato bugs. Some of the bright green powder was scooped out of its container and added to the water in the sprinkling can. The water had to be constantly stirred with a stick lest the poison settle to the bottom as you went up and down the potato rows inflicting the death penalty on those little striped boogers. Naturally you got some of this green liquid on your hands, legs and feet and so thereafter it was a bath with lye soap with baking soda and salt thrown in for good measure. For a long time, I've been on my last layer of skin!

My prettiest dress now is blue and green. What do you think I think of when I put it on? Wrong! I'm a graduate of Thought Substitution 101. I think of emeralds and sapphires, blue hyacinths and green willow leaves.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.