tough

When my brother, uncle Bill, grandad and I arrived at the shack, the screens on the formerly screened in porch were mostly rusted away. Grandad decided that one of the projects of the visit would be to put some new screen up. I wasn't really sure what the point of screening in the porch would be. The porch wasn't very big, and it was pretty full of shelves, an antique ice box, a table, cans of paint, jars of nails, sacks of seeds, rolls of tarpaper and uncountable other miscellaneous items that might accumulate on the front porch of a cabin in the woods. So it wasn't the kind of porch where you'd be able to sit in a rocking chair sipping lemonade enjoying a summer evening. The view from the porch wasn't that great either. Instead of looking out over the lake and seeing the reflection of the trees on the other side, you'd probably be looking out at your car parked in front of the cabin, and a bunch of pine trees.
But the screened in porch turned out to be quite valuable. If you caught some fish, you could clean them on the old wooden table on the porch and not be molested by flies in the middle of the day, or mosquitos in the evening. In the summer, from evening until morning, going outside meant being attacked by hordes of mosquitos. As you came back into the cabin, you might be followed by fifty mosquitos, and if you were lucky, you could leave thirty or forty behind when you shut the screen door of the porch, and then you might be able to leave half of the remaining ones behind on the porch when you slid in the cabin's screen door. The screened in porch served as a sort of mosquito lock, so you'd only have five or ten mosquitos to contend with inside the cabin, instead of two or three times that number. Then later when I came during hunting season, the screen helped keep most of the snow off the porch, and slowed the bitterly cold wind down a little bit, so not quite as much cold air would blow in when you opened the cabin door to go out or come in.
We drove into town to get nails, staples, screen and some other supplies for the screen project, and some food and ice for the cooler.
We went to the old hardware store grandad had been going to for decades, and the hardware guys seemed to know him. Grandad opted for the aluminum screen even though it was more expensive than steel. That seemed to be a good choice. It lasted for many years without rusting away like the previous screen. But then I'm not sure how long that previous screen had lasted. It might have been there for thirty years or more before it rusted away.
We also got some more mosquito repellant, and grandad asked if there was anything better than fly strips for killing flies. One of the hardware store guys showed him some spray, and these little cardboard things that you hang up in the middle of the room and they're supposed to kill flies. The cardboard was printed with dark wood grain, but I don't think anyone would be convinced that they were made of wood, not even flies. They had three circular holes on each side. I guess the flies were supposed to go in those holes and touch the yellowish material inside, or maybe the yellowish material emitted poisonous vapors through the holes. He said the hanging things worked pretty good, so grandad told him he'd take a few of those. Then the hardware store guy pointed out that the warning label said not to use them around children or pets, so he probably would not want to use them in the room where my brother and I were staying, it might not be good for us. Grandad said it was fine, he'd take them anyway.
He looked over at my brother and me and said, "It'll make 'em tough."