Maybe with pants tucked into tall boots, like Pa in the Little House books wore?
What about kids? Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn didn’t wear shoes in the summer. In Missouri? They’d get a terrible case of chiggers bites. Did they just live with it? it’s hard to imagine.
Shit, I want to know how to deal with chiggers today.
Probably the same way we dealt with them when I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s. We stayed out of tall grass when the chiggers were bad and always wore long pants if we needed to walk through it. If we got chiggers, there wasn’t much you could do except to itch like crazy and suffer for a few days. We took baths in a bleach solution if they were really bad but they had that back in the old days as well.
Drink great amounts to get your blood-alcohol level up high enough that the biting insects avoid you.
Because chiggers can’t be boozers.
name them. if you have a personal relationship with them then they aren’t so irritating; it’s like family
I’m sure people just lived with them, like hookworms. Tom Sawyer didn’t tell you about all them hookworms, did he?
Old days? In the 50’s we put fingernail polish on them.
We dabbed bacon grease on them. In retrospect I’m not convinced it was effective.
Oh, as someone mentioned, pants with long legs, washing as soon as possible after being in an area know to be infested, perhaps other things I have forgotten as it’s been a bit over half century since I had a need to think about it.
Golf clap.
How about girls and women? Did everyone always wear full hose from waist to shoes under their dresses? I know that at times it was inappropriate for ladies to show bare legs, but was this always prevented with full leg coverage or did they sometimes wear socks that were long enough to hide everything in daily life?
This treatment survived into at least the 70s.
I’ve used powdered sulfur many times backpacking. Stinks, but you won’t get chiggers.
Ask for flowers of sulfur at any organic pharmacy. It used to be sold at all the old mom & pop drugstores.
Powdered sulfur, applied to socks, ankles, etc., is an effective repellant.
A few years an acquaintance told me of a technique an old country boy taught him. After walking through chigger territory, he would wrap his hands around each lower leg and rub up and down while squeezing moderately. Seemed to work.
I’ve gone barefoot all over the place, and not really had chigger issues.
I’ve generally avoiding tall grass, though…you never know what’s in the grass.
The fact that sulfur makes me think that if the body had a increased amount the chigger might not find you as tasty. Try eating more garlic, which contains sulfurdioxides. Found this in wikipedia the entire article is to long for a quick post.
Hippocrates, Galen, Pliny the Elder, and Dioscorides all mention the use of garlic for many conditions, including parasites, respiratory problems, poor digestion, and low energy. Its use in China dates back to 2000 BCE.[1]
1959, down in the river bottoms swinging a double bit axe from can see to can’t see. Not just a short exposure time so who bothered to sniff until after the showers, come sparkin time.
One pair of jean, socks, boots & a shirt for all summer, wash then at your peril. Every morning, take the clothes from the corner where you left them standing the night before & shake sulphur in & on all. 2 different spray bug killer coats on inside & outside, then mink oil the boots.
Garlic toast or clove with breakfast if you were really serious and then rinse your hands it a mixture of kerosene & rose water.
Don’t sniff.
Load your personal galvanized 5 gallon water can, you’ll drink it all just to survive the first 4 hours until you refill at lunch. Between the dew & your sweat, you will be soaked soft in the first 15 minutes but nary a chigger, tick nor mosquito will trouble your brow. After about a month, the jeans will be tougher than chaps & not a spike will get you after that. )
Don’t sniff.
At the end of the workday, stand the clothes in the corner for the next day and shower with LAVA soap from top to bottom using lots of elbow grease.
Clean & dry.
Sniff.
Moccasins, soft & thin struttin jeans & a soft T will have you ready for anything if you are 16 or 17.
Your pony’s hooves will thunder up the lane as you rush through the full moons glory as the black haired girl watches…
I’m having a bit of trouble with step 1.
Did the same in the 1940s.
Has anyone tried “No Chigging” signs?
So when I was a kid, it was common knowledge that chiggers are insects which burrow into your skin and hang out in there for a few days drinking blood. The standard treatment was rubber cement–it suffocated them, you see.
Well, it turns out every bit of that common knowledge was false. They’re mites, and they don’t dig themselves into your skin, and once you feel the itch they’re long gone.