State

candies and novelties unknown in. small places. And the whole was per¬ meated with implications of frenetic activities. Mankind was perpetually on the go. The announcer called out such resounding names as Louisville. Cin¬ cinnati. St. Louis, and Philadelphia with the resonant and elegant non¬ chalance the local postman would give directions to a house-to-house agent. Every boy who visited such a gleaming terminal (and virtually every man. loo) had to put hamstrings on himself to keep from using the tile doors as skating rinks and there was the vast and almost overpowering compulsion to yell some exultant cry of animal heartiness so that the far- flung corridors and the high arches and the great columns and the mighty domes would send back echoes in the form of bread cast on holy w aters. But despite its duzzlemcnts, the "city" terminal was big business. Everyone in it seemed to be on urgent business. As overwhelming as its grandeur was. it lacked the off-hand infectious- ness of the local dec-po. It wasn't somewhere one dropped in just to sec w hat trumps were at a given hour nor who was taking in the tricks. The local dec-po might smell as if wet saddle blankets were drying, or if some scien¬ tists were doing experiments on mil¬ dew. dry rot, and fungus growths. The walls might be snagglcd-toothcd and have jaundiced eyes. The floors might have the mumps, and they might look as if all the walnuts in creation had been dumped and hulled there. THE STATE. MAY 1SS1 Still, the station was a place of en¬ chantment because the candidates for high state office debated on the plat¬ form of the freight depot : because the local fire and military companies held drills in the big street in front of the depot, and because they left for their summer encampments and tourna¬ ments through the portals of the depot and returned the same way: and be¬ cause the spontaneous shows, the dog and pony shows, the trick bicycle rid¬ ers. and the one-man-bands all used the street in front of the depot for a stage or show ground. But above and beyond all this, the grubby, stinking station was enshrined in the hearts and in the wistfulncssesof all boys. Many a boy whose wealth was limited to a cane fishing pole, a few marbles, a bottle of ticks, and a knife with one blade, traveled the length of the nation without ever leaving the safe security of the crusty platform. This enchanted journey was vicarious, but it was supercharged with all the glamour and the poetry of musical wanderlust. The train was the mystery and awe of the outside world. It was the drama¬ tic lightning and the magic thunder of a world beyond. Time and space were laid bare and reduced to workable pro¬ portions. Some eternal portion of the boy's yearning and ardor chewed up the rails and the countrysides of the nation. The boy was a royal hobo, the child of October, the gold-haired scion of all the harvests. All the oceans, lakes, and rivers forejoined in one stream, and this stream rushed from the boy's toes to his brain and back and forth as if his innermost secrets and joys were pul upon a singing shuttle. The mountains and plains melted into the palm of his hand, and the w heeling amalgam of the shining wonder of the whole of it was a yellow top spinning and making whirlwinds of little sym¬ phonies whenever he whipped the string. He was the personal recipient of the supreme accolade when a brakeman. using the narrow catwalk atop a car for a dazzling, perilous tightrope, waved him a merry greeting. This was a pass, in fee simple, to ride the headwinds of all adventure. Again, a hobo or bindlcstiff would wave to him from his precarious perch on the rods, or from the dark edges of an empty boxcar. The greeting was a joke on the ow ners of the railroad, an open-handed invita- { Continued on page 67 1 Bugs Were The Fashion tty KILLY AKTHI K Milday's costume jewelry this year features natural colors, principally khaki, coral and ivory. To keep it at¬ tractive and interesting, however, she will not have to bathe it. feed it or keep it in little cages as did wealthy Wil¬ mington women in the 1850s. For evening dress-up occasions, they wore "fire beetles" of the click- beetle family known as "cujuco." which were imported from the tropics. The Wilmington Commercial Ap¬ peal in 1850 reported the beetles cost about 25 e a dozen and are "kept in elegant little cages, fed preferably on bits of sugar cane, and bathed twice a day. either by the ladies themselves or their maids. In the evenings they arc put in little sacks, shaped like roses, and attached to the ladies' dresses. The light these little bugs emit sur¬ passes in brilliancy the reflection of the purest diamonds, The daily bath they receive is absolutely necessary, as without it they would emit no light, which is sometimes strong enough, it is said, to read by." According to Dr. Elizabeth Mc¬ Mahan of the University of North Car¬ olina Zoology Department. Chapel Hill, entomologists have recorded their existence in recent years in tropi¬ cal North and South America. They arc about 25 or more millimeters long and emit a brilliant greenish light at the base of the pronotum and a reddish light from the venter of the abdomen. The genus Pyrophorus to which the cajuco belongs is not mentioned in C. S. Brimley's^The Insects of North Carolina" so they probably were im¬ ported as ornaments. The Wilmington paper added this to its account of the fashion: '"In order to catch these bugs, it is necessary to fasten a live coal to a stick and move it to and fro in the dark. The cajuco thinks this bright point a rival, and in his anger darts toward it. and finds the grave of his liberty in the hands of his captor." it