Fireflies

Catching fireflies to put in a mason jar was a thing when I was young. Using a nail and a rock, I’d punch holes into the jar’s lid and consider that the entire life giving effort needed to keep my fireflies alive. Sadly, most times the little creatures stopped flashing and settled to the bottom. I don’t remember but have a hope that I or my mom would free them before they died of starvation or loneliness.

Fireflies are like old man memories floating and shining in the darkness, my mind’s aurora borealis. Shimmering waves of fire weave in and out of the dark spaces in my head and usually defy my attempts to put them in a jar. (I’m reminded of Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle”) Memories close by seem to burn brighter. Far away memories are dim but sometimes get caught when I’m triggered by something I see. This weekend one of those fireflies slowed and spent time in my bottle.

I went to the Richmond Railroad Museum and walked through an old caboose on display in the yard. The walk through kicked off a trip down the rabbit hole of when I grew up in small town South Dakota. When I was very young, huge trains stopped at the busy station and kept Huron connected with the rest of the world. In those days most trains had cabooses and the cabooses had little cupolas jutting out of the roofline. In the cupola were seats for the brakeman or conductor, a lookout where they could view the entire train as well as the world around.

I’m told the ride in the caboose was rough sometimes causing injury to the occupants who weren’t paying close enough attention and sometimes even to those who were experienced and careful. The car was light and at the end of the locomotive’s whip. As I sat in the car I imagined the shaking, the clackety-clack of the rails, the dust and dirt kicked up by the dozens of cars in front, and the glory of sitting in the cupola and watching the train’s progress.

The image below looks into the heart of the caboose, the cupola in the top left, a bench that must have been a challenge to sit in, and the hard metal of everything, everything. I thought of the heat, the roar and shaking, the dirt. Where did they sweep the grit? Open the back door? Virginia’s dirt swept into Maryland’s landscape?

Oh well, I think I’ll let this memory out of the bottle and back into the wild of my memory’s youth.