Eldo and Julie bought a house in mid-Tennessee and invited me to visit over the summer of ‘76. It was a sharp right off Hwy 70 outside of Nashville over a small bridge and then miles on a dirt road. It turned out that they had to run a water line up the side of a steep wooded hill so that this old fixer-upper would have water. I told Eldo that I was ready to work for Julie’s fried chicken dinner. He stopped to caution me that we both had to put on a pair of pantyhose before we ventured out on that overgrown hillside. After 3 hours of clambering up and down the hill and laying in the dirt, we finished the task. It’s when we went inside to change that I realized that the pantyhose acted as a barrier against those nasty ticks that dotted the outside of the leggings. That lesson has stayed with me all these years later. Each time I hear about the myriad of tick and mosquito-borne diseases that we have to deal with…Lyme disease, West Nile virus, EEE, I think of Eldo’s great pantyhose trick! Finally, I’ve designed something based on his clever solution that improves protection and helps us take back the woods!
