Different Slants

Seeing the World from a New Angle

Chicago Wasp-Killer, MBA…by Robert M. Katzman

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© June 26, 2012

This is a curious story about control, written at a time in America when few of us have control over anything. But also defiance, self-determination, art, science, isolation and confrontation.  When I was nine years old.

It is also about killing wasps. The kind of wasps with six legs, not that other kind. Why would anyone think that?

The time of this story is summer, 1959. The place, southern Wisconsin.

I was nine years old. I was not afraid of flying stinging wasps. And that made all the difference.

When I was nine, my parents packed me off to an overnight camp for the first time ever.  For two months. Maybe they thought I’d wander off in the woods and get eaten by something bigger than me. Most things were bigger than me. But I don’t think any experienced bear would find my skinny little body worth the trouble.

I was sick all the time from whatever weeds grew in the rural part of southern Wisconsin. There were no drugs in 1959. I want to think enduring the ragweed misery helped build my character, but there’s no evidence of that.

I didn’t want to be at that large camp with its mob of screaming children racing around and its tall athletic counselors who told us what to do, every-single-minute-of-the-day. Like my grammar school but worse. Around the clock supervision.

Two months to a nine-year-old was an eternity and just like that famous book about lethal children by William Golding, Lord of the Flies, published five years earlier, some situations bring out unexpected aspects of children’s personalities, like savagery or other characteristics. He was right.

I was equally unsocial back in Chicago. Hated sports, didn’t work and play well with others, really hated swimming and mostly wanted to be by myself so I could read and draw. That same year of discovery for me, 1959, I started what would become five years of art school, beginning with the Art Institute.  Heaven for me.

My other passion was walking through the many lush prairies filled with a rainbow of wildflowers; prairies which still existed within a long bike ride of my far South Side home in Chicago. That was an excellent place to both be alone and be surrounded by teeming, buzzing, flying insect life at the same time. I watched them, and most likely they watched me, but none of them told me what to do.

I studied the many varieties of butterflies. Watched the Dragonflies, which to me closely resembled World War Two heavy bombers, hovering in place without moving, with huge, wide crystal-like wings, which reminded me of a Catholic Church’s multi-paned stained glass windows. I watched bees crawl deep into flowers and flit from purple clover flowers and anything else that tasted good to them. I wanted to draw them, so I watched every thing each kind of insect did. I was very, very, very patient.

I examined the spider webs, which were everywhere, with the sunlight glinting off of the lacey webs when they were wet with dew drops, spreading tiny rainbows on the surrounding leaves and ground. There was always some dried up something remaining in the webs from an earlier meal, like the shell of something that used to live inside of it.

I would pass under towering Sunflower plants on thick green hairy stems with their wide brown faces ringed by yellow teeth-like petals pointed up at and following the sun as it moved across the sky. A person, a child, can learn a lot by standing quietly and watching.

I saw that grasshopper’s mouths had little gate-like parts that moved from the left and right side of its helmeted immobile face, which slammed shut in the center. Their eyes were so oblong and opaque; they seemed to me to be tiny machines. Thousands of tiny munching machines chewing up the Chicago prairies.

Grasshoppers bothered me. They seemed to be mindless, threatening and relentless.

In the occasional shady place, if I came across a dried up wooden shack standing by itself in an overgrown field, I would study that, too. The texture of the wood, the softness as it crumbled in my fingers, how lightweight pieces of the shack lying on the ground all around it were, as slowly it disintegrated, fascinated me, because without any moisture inside of it, the fragments were somehow deader than any piece of wood I would pick up at a construction site.

I frequently went to watch those places teeming with organized activity, too. There were so many buildings being built at the same time in 1959, only fourteen years after the end of the long war which my father was part of, and with gangs of men crawling all over the growing frameworks of houses, they reminded me very much of the grasshoppers. Except the grasshoppers were eating the prairie plants, and the house-builders were eating the prairies.

Inside of the shacks where it was dark and the heat from the strong sunlight was blocked, I first came across wasp’s nests. I reacted like most people would, I suppose. Jumping back out into the sunlight in terror of those evil-looking stingers poking out of their swollen rear ends. I had never been stung, so I could only imagine how horrible it would be.

Still…

My curiosity overcame my timidity and I began watching the wasps. They were violence in the peaceful prairie.  Standing perfectly still, moving just my eyes, I wanted to learn their ways. All the others: the bees, the spiders, the butterflies, had repeated patterns of behavior. So, logically to me, must the wasps. Though only nine, I thought like that.

Football, baseball, basketball and all that seemed to me to be a completely stupid waste of time. So a guy caught a ball or hit a ball or ran somewhere when other people tried to stop him. Who cares?

Okay, millions cared, but I did not and I would rather be with the spiders and wasps. They made sense.  And, importantly I guess, they didn’t seek to control me.

Over time, I learned that wasps flew something like helicopters: straight up, straight ahead, but very seldom at an angle. Their bodies, so ugly and threatening and somehow hanging suspended there in mid-air, seemed too big to me compared to their wings. Ponderous.

I thought they might need a moment to gather up speed before being able to overcome their weight and then fly fast. Like I saw airplanes did at O’ Hare airport, slowly driving down runways, then going faster and faster until their front wheels lifted off the ground and then after that, their tails. Wasps seemed to me to be like that.

Which then meant that before that happened, they would move slowly enough for me to kill.

After a few weeks of watching to confirm my 4th grade assumptions, and to screw up the nerve to see if I could do it and get away safely, I tried something out. Something lethal. I brought an old pair of my leather school shoes to the prairie, put each of my hands inside of each shoe and slowly walked into the wasp’s shack, and then waited.

In a short time, a single wasp from a nest near the shack’s floor flew straight up in the air, like smoke rising, maybe to look at me before attacking, but it rose as slowly as smoke would and in the time it took that single wasp to make a decision, I slammed my hands together and crushed the wasp. No doubt about it. That wasp was history and I ran out of the shack to see if a swarm would follow me, which was a really big risk to take for the sake of an experiment if you think about it.

Where was the reward?

My reward was knowing.

No vengeful swarm followed me out that shack’s door.  Evidently, killing a single wasp didn’t cause a mass reaction to the killer. Maybe, I guessed, it would if I kicked the nest itself, but not eliminating a solitary scout. This was a very important thing for me to learn. Not just then, but later.

But overall, that summer the most important thing I learned is how wasps fly, how they react and that a nine-year-old boy could kill one successfully.  With that, I lost my fear of wasps. And I began to practice killing wasps. Hundreds of wasps. Not one sting, ever.

So the camp counselors told all of us when to eat. When to sleep. When to wake up. When to write letters home to our parents. When to shower. When to swim. When to stop swimming. When to play games, which games to play, and when to stop playing them. When my lack of enthusiasm or skills did not help my team, I was yelled at by everyone.

I decided that my being sent to a faraway summer camp was good for my parents, convenient for my parents to not have to care for their little boy, but they didn’t take into account what life would be like for me. I began to resist.

I got up slower; read my books with a flashlight under the covers late at night; wandered away from the baseball diamond missing my turn at bat; and mostly, no one noticed. Or more likely, didn’t care. My turn at bat would not increase the team’s chances for winning.  Swimming in their stinking pool however, was impossible to escape.

The mutual antagonism was not hidden.  Soon, I was no longer alone by choice.  I spent more time alone walking around the camp buildings and trying to keep out of sight when activities were being organized. Sometimes this worked. Sometimes not and some of the counselors were nasty men.  I counted the four weeks to my freedom from relentlessly organized, regulated and supervised…fun.

But one thing turned out differently from all the others.

When we first began showering to go swimming and then we all went to a little freestanding building made of cinder blocks, with a shower curtain serving as one of the four walls where we were to leave our shorts and underwear and put on our swim trunks, there was a problem.  That little structure was infested with wasps. Black death-like ugly wasps.

The other kids were in terror. The counselors refused to enter the changing hut, telling someone to go find the elusive camp janitor to get rid of them. This was so interesting to me. All the people were acting the same way. Just like the insects did.

I asked one of the cowering counselors waiting out there with us if I could borrow his leather shoes which he was holding tightly against his chest. He looked at me strangely like this was one more weird aspect of my troublesome personality, but he was too distracted by a whining group of lined-up children to ask me why, and just handed them to me. I put them on my hands.

Then I held my hands up in front of me like they were boxing gloves. The man’s shoes were somewhat heavier than mine. But not too much for the purpose I had in mind. And, his longer shoes gave me an even better chance of hitting my mark.

I slapped the shoe bottoms together a few times to test my speed and to get used to the greater weight. After a few minutes of practice, I got out of the line where by then all the other surrounding kids and counselors close enough to see me had already, I guess, took for granted that I was nuts, and I walked into the little hut, pulling the plastic curtain tightly closed behind me. Several of the counselors screeched at me to get the hell out of there, but it was too late. I was in there.

I waited. Smelled musty and there was dim light with the curtain closed, but that would not be to the wasp’s advantage either, I thought, while continuing to wait. My eyes adjusted pretty fast and it was time.

Soon, the first wasp rose up to see me. Smash!

Then, another. Smash!

Then two, a first!, but what the hell, and Smash, Smash!!!

That was a revelation to me.

After a little bit longer, and after killing a number of more wasps, I waited and saw that no more came. I pulled open the curtain, scraped the crushed parts of the dead wasps off the soles of that counselor’s big shoes against the side of a cider block, and handed his shoes back to him.

Silence.

Impatient, I said to him,

“It’s safe now. They’re all dead. You can go in.”

More silence.

Then all at once, the counselors began herding their mob of campers into the de-wasped hut, and then I squeezed back into line until I could also go back into the hut to change into my swim trunks and jump into the freezing cold pool that I hated. No one said anything. It was sort of strange. But no worse, because I had no friends there, anyway.

Next day, same thing.

And the next.

It went on like that for a week, and I could see the expectant looks on the faces of the other kids which I read as:

“Hurry up, Katzman, so we can go swimming.”

Like I worked there. Like this was my assumed responsibility.

Seemed like a bad deal to me.

So, the next morning when all the kids were lined up, and a lot of kids were lined up because the wasps were no longer a problem, my counselor handed me his leather shoes without a word now that he had a 4th grade Wyatt Earp on hand to do his killing for him. Except that morning, I hesitated, not accepting his shoes.

Then, without a smile, I looked up at the guy and quietly said,

“I don’t want to swim any more. How ’bout it?”

A surprised look on his face. What the hell??

Then he looked down at me.

Then over at the long impatient line of squealing children eager to go swimming.

Then back at me.

I had the son of a bitch and he knew it.

Very quietly, more like a whisper, he said,

“Okay, Bobby, no more swimming.”

It was usually just plain “Katz-man“, snarled out at me, but not that day.

He again offered me his big shoes. I took them. We nodded to each other, and I walked into the cinder block hut to kill the wasps.

He kept his word, and I learned something important at nine years old which a person didn’t have to go to Harvard Business School to discover:

Knowledge, is power.

***************************

Publishing News! 

Bob Katzman’s two new true Chicago books are now for sale, from him!
Vol. One: A Savage Heart and Vol. Two: Fighting Words

Gritty, violent, friendship, classic American entrepreneurship love, death, heartbreak and the real dirt about surviving in a completely corrupt major city under the Chicago Machine.More history and about one man’s life than a person may imagine.

Please visit my new website: https://www.dontgoquietlypress.com
If a person doesn’t wan’t to use PayPaI, I also have a PO Box & I ship anywhere in America.

Send me a money order with your return and contact info.
I will get your books to you within ten days.
Here’s complete information on how to buy my books:

Vol 1: A Savage Heart and Vol. 2: Fighting Words
My books weigh almost 2 pounds each, with about 525 pages each and there are a total together of 79 stories and story/poems.

Robert M. Katzman
Don’t Go Quietly Press
PO Box 44287
Racine, Wis. 53404-9998  (262)752-3333, 8AM–7PM

Books cost $29.95 each, plus shipping

For: (1)$3.95; (2)$5.95; (3)$7.95; (4)$8.95 (5)$9.95;(6) $10.95

(7) $11.95; (8) $12.95; (9)$13.95 (10)$15.95 (15)$19.95

I am also for hire if anyone wants me to read my work and answer questions in the Chicago/Milwaukee area. Schools should call me for quantity discounts for 30 or more books. Also: businesses, bookstores, private organizations or churches and so on.

My Fighting Words Publishing Co. four original books, published between 2004 and 2007 are now out-of-print. I still have some left and will periodically offer them for sale on my new website.

9 Comments »

Comment by Herb Berman

June 27, 2012 @ 4:25 pm

Terrific memoir, Bob. It starts out Thoreau-like with pointed descriptions of the natural world, then segues seamlessly into a very poignant story. I learned a lot about. And about one Robert Katzman.

I also have my summer camp experiences, which were mostly positive. I did like the games and the competition, and the lake, got along well with the other kids. And our counselors were pretty relaxed and didn’t really compel their little 10-year old delinquents to do anything they didn’t want to do. For example, I hated horses, hated everything about them, their size, their snorts, their manure piles, their stink, their stupidity. And I refused to climb up on one of them. Glen, the counselor, said something like, “Yeah, they’re nasty beasts, aren’t they” (he was English-American), “stay away from the bloody animals if you want, go make a lanyard, do something useful.” And I sat in the shade and read a comic book. Useful enough, I guess.

I wasn’t nearly the thoughtful kid you were, and can’t imagine that I would have spent hours studying wasps or anything else for that matter. I needed physical activity and socializing.

I did learn that knowledge is power. In basic training, I scored 100% on some 4th-grade-level test given to trainees on military etiquette (we actually had classes on that nonsense), and my drill sergeant “suggested” I take all the tests for everyone in the Company, which I did of course, all tests being passed to me under the eagle eye of aforementioned sergeant. In exchange, no KP, no guard duty, limited PT. We got the “camp award” for “academic achievement,” and I got out of a lot of shit. Oddly enough, the other troopers didn’t resent me; one of my buddies was convinced that “Jews are just smarter than people.” I was smart enough not to remind him that I was, in fact, a “person,” also smart enough not to disillusion him about my brainpower or that of my coreligionists.

Comment by Lacey

June 28, 2012 @ 11:37 am

I must say this was the most vivid recollection I’ve ever been transported to. A lot of fun, though you would disagree during that period of time. 🙂

Comment by J Steve Adler

July 1, 2012 @ 5:08 am

Herb is almost as good at story telling as you. He does that for his arbitration skills. Regardless, you did it again, a great story from your past. Well done!

Comment by Herb Berman

July 1, 2012 @ 7:36 am

Hi Steve,

Not as good. Bob’s a master. My decisions do have to tell a persuasive story. If they don’t, if the reader isn’t persuaded by my narrative before I reach my conclusion, I’ve failed.

Comment by Don Larson

August 9, 2014 @ 10:44 am

Hi Bob,

Excellent!

Don

Comment by David Griesemer

August 9, 2014 @ 7:54 pm

Starts with a long string of funny quips.
“Most things were bigger than me.”
“…the ragweed misery helped build my character, but there’s no evidence of that.”
“…told us what to do…every-single-minute-of-the-day.”
Then, as Herb said, it moves through a science log into an expose of the human condition. Well composed, the main point (knowledge is power) being foreshadowed midway through (“My reward was knowing”). Interesting punctuation in the final line.

Comment by Brad Dechter

August 12, 2014 @ 12:58 pm

OFS! Loved it- thanks for the memories- they are mine too- at least where the south side is concerned!
Hey did you ever lick the ice off the insides of the windows during the wintertime?
Brad

Comment by Brad Dechter

May 3, 2017 @ 9:14 am

I’d say “stinging commentary ” but it’s not. Knowledge is power for sure.
Hope all is well Bob!
Brad

Comment by Jim Payne

May 23, 2018 @ 5:35 pm

I love your story telling. The fact that it is true is nice, but the story, now that is great.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>