Waco History Podcast

Pests—the creepy-crawly, buzzing kinds—are a year-round nuisance in Waco but are especially present in summer months, when they come out in full force and bring misery along with them. Louise Murphy describes her introduction to one such pest: "I didn't know anything about roaches until we got an icebox. I got acquainted with Mr. Roach. And off and on all the years, we still have a problem with Mr. Roach because they can get in these cracks in the ground where there's shift[s] in there, and you cannot get rid of them." Interviewer: "Well, what—what do you think it was about the icebox that—that—" "Oh, they were full of them. They love that. It was the coolness. Besides that, they—they had moisture down in under there, and they clung to that. And I didn't know what they was until we got one, and I couldn't imagine what that was." She recalls an experience with bedbugs in the 1950s: "Boy, they get in your bed, they get in your walls, and they would get in the cracks of the—under the house, the cracks and