BROWNSVILLE BOYS AND GIRLS JOINED "SHOO FLY" CONTEST

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

The song written by T. Brigham Bishop in 1869 after the Civil War, “Shoo Fly, Don’t Bother Me,” reached its popularity during the Spanish-American War a few years later, when during a lull in the action, soldiers would hum it as they went about their duties . 

It was then that they had to deal with a new aerial enemy.  No, not the airplane bomber, but the pesky insects, mosquitoes, which carried yellow fever. 

Prior to this period, when Brownsville was a virgin country, many of its citizens were dying - the familiar and the stranger alike - from yellow fever and other Middle Age diseases common to the climate and stagnant bodies of water (resacas, esteros). 

By 1912 this country was invaded not by a foreign power, but by the pesky flies.  Diseases spawned by the flies created such a nuisance that medical journals were dedicating much space in the literature on the fly and its menace to public health.

Residents on both sides of the Rio Grande knew them all too well. In fact, Matamoros' first settlement was pushed back by more than a decade due to the pestilences caused by the flies spawned in the stagnant esteros.

The research led to the knowledge that the supposedly harmless flies were the carriers of numerous deadly diseases and a vigorous nationwide campaign to eradicate them was started. 

Locally, the surge to shoo the fly away started when the Daily Herald ran a story “How to rid the house of flies” giving instructions on how to eliminate and/or reduce the fly population.  The big effort to kill millions of flies in Brownsville came in the form of a contest that was inaugurated on May of 1912 and was conducted by the Ladies of the Civil League.

 “Swat the fly’s boys and girls contest” rules were printed in the Herald as follows: 

Flies must be turned in to the city secretary at the city hall on Saturday afternoon, and a special officer will be detailed to measure them, and proper credit will be given.

Boy or girl killing largest number of flies

* first prize $16.15

* second prize five dollars, and $1 to each of the five next largest scores

After two months of swatting flies the results were in, but contest organizers were disappointed in the number of children that participated.  The counting officers, who anticipated hundreds of kids would participate, were not besieged with children carrying bags of dead flies.

Instead, only five kids entered the contest and the amount of flies killed hardly justified the prizes offered.  Prize money was donated by the Grand Theater and the Brownsville Herald.

The record was kept throughout the contest by city secretary Crisanto Villarreal to whom the  swatters reporting every Saturday at City Hall.  The complete returns showed the following entries and amount of flies killed by each:

* First place with eight quarts and one pint, William Shears

* Second place with four quarts ½ pint, Antonio Gonzales

* 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th place were Carlos Castaneda, Isaac Montes and William Scanlan. 

Although it was not at a record setting level, Brownsville did its part in eliminating 14 quarts of flies. In Washington D.C, where a similar contest was conducted, 10,000,000 were swatted.

It was an era when the pestiferous fly was a death-dealing pest. Many of the early graves at the Old Brownsville Cemetery bear the date 1858; most of those stones also noted, “Died of Yellow Fever.” 

In the early days of this region a mosquito bite would be deadly and the fly was more than just a pest.