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Catching Magic

Some people learned everything they ever needed to know about life in Kindergarten class. Somehow between finger paints and dyslexia it took me a bit longer. Everything I needed to know about life, and a lot more, I learned, catching lightning bugs.

Like most kids I was fascinated each summer when at dusk every evening for weeks, tiny bugs with lights on them would mysteriously emerge from the cooler areas of our yard and linger just long enough that a five-year old’s clumsy hand could grab one right out of the air. I could only manage two or three as once grounded on my hand, the critters became ants and walked quickly to the highest point on my knuckles or extended fingers only to take off like a jet on an aircraft carrier being catapulted back into the air where it could flash its light where God intended, anywhere free from my hand.

Like millions before me I tried to keep them and bring them into my room in a jar on the nightstand. Not just any jar but one equipped with small holes in the lid and some grass at the bottom. (Not being one to worry after removing a living organism from its natural environment only to incarcerate it into what would become its death chamber by morning albeit ventilated and adorned with grass from which it emerged.) A few moments of amazement before I dozed off to sleep were more important to me than any disruption in the global ecosystem of which I was yet unaware. Every morning the experiment turned out the same way each time, the collected bugs that consumed my attention the previous night were all dead, mixed in the grass that had already withered.

This went on but I never got tired of catching lightning bugs as a kid. Today sometimes when the sun is getting low I look about my backyard in the areas shaded when the sun is shining I look around to see if I can catch a glimpse of the first bug to flash a light. This is complicated because there are imposters like flies, moths, love bugs and a whole cadre of bugs that emerge at dusk to forage for food and mate during the relative safety of the night. Sometimes I even see the lightning bugs as they take to flight from a blade of grass, their launching pad. I will never look at grass quite the same way again the next time I mow the lawn. How many preferred launching pads have I destroyed just so I could have a neat lawn? How many of the creator’s bugs with lights have I destroyed without even knowing it? Oh, the losss, Oh the humanity. Wait a minute these are just bugs, yes, but these are bugs everyone likes. Lightning bugs always seem to fascinate everyone. Imagine a bug that no one complains about, must be God’s idea of a joke. Turns out it’s a good one.

When I was eight years old our family met a person, who was a broker who collected lightning bugs for cancer research and paid money for people to collect them. The broker never told us just how they used the lighting bugs for research. Did they have a secret way to keep them alive in a jar so kids with cancer could keep them for pets? Did they use them for night lights for cancer patients in foreign countries who did not have electricity? Did they try to decode the flashing of the bug as a secret language from another planet so advanced that they could send their bugs to us with a message how to cure everyone with cancer? Or did they just study them and wonder why lightning bugs never got cancer? For whatever reason these important questions never came up.

Our family was of very modest means at this time and with six kids there simply was very little money for anything besides the basics which we always had, just not much more. We began collecting lighting bugs each night and after upgrading our overnight storage system from a jar to a fine mesh bag in the refrigerator we had a commodity to sell to the broker each morning. We got paid a whopping 40 cents per hundred live bugs we delivered to the broker.

The first few nights we barely caught a couple hundred bugs. But still the more we produced the more money we made. The same applies to successful business as I would latter find out. Produce more of what people want, in our case the broker, and you get more income. Simple, cool.

Early on we had a lot of bugs that would die before we could deliver them the next morning to the broker. It was disappointing to lose so many bugs after playing so hard, I mean working so hard, collecting them. We did not know why some of the bugs were dying so we began to ask questions and experiment. We were failing so what harm could it do to try something different. Similar to life, some of the most successful people became so after a lot of failure. We tried moving the bugs to different parts of the refrigerator. Turns out they liked it near the bottom perhaps because the humidity was higher there. We had already learned that if you put the bugs in the refrigerator they would “go to sleep” which they appeared to be when you first took them out. In reality, they were going into hypothermic shock which caused them to fold up their wings and pull in their six little legs close to their tiny bodies so they could keep warm. This made them easy to count which was next to impossible when they were crawling around and trying to get to a high spot to take flight. If you took too long to count, the anesthetic coma-like state began to wear off and they would start to twitch and move their legs without crawling. We came to know that you could only take the amount of bugs you could count in about three to four minutes otherwise we had a swarm of them get loose in the house which happened on more than one occasion. Oddly they could survive in the house for up to three days but not a night in a jar.

We began to learn a lot about the bugs. Quirky things like they did just fine if when in the asleep mode you could simply pour them onto the kitchen table (yes, the same one we took our meals on) and count them by flicking them to one side with the back edge of a dinner knife. Once counted, usually in groups of 100, we could then sweep the pile we just flicked together and brush them into a large net. It was possible to have up to about 1,000 of what might be described as brown rice pellets in one of these collection nets. Then back into the fridge for more “sleeping”. Next we experimented with netting materials. Being one to not go out and buy store bought nets we made our own. It turns out the only net you could buy was one made for catching larger bugs, primarily butterflies. Butterfly nets worked modestly at best. Some had holes in their mesh so large a lot of lightning bugs could just wiggle through and get out.

Our family became loathe, to throw away anything that might be of value someday (think hoarders) and we just happened to have some old curtain sheers that formerly adorned our living room. These sheers had three important features that made them ideal for our bugs: very fine mesh, lightweight, and you could see through them. We grabbed some metal coat hangers and formed them into a circle, and then Mom dragged out her sewing machine. After making a quick pattern, we draped one side around the wire loop and sewed it in place, then added another side and sewed both pieces together to complete the net. We cut the handle off an old broom with a saw, and with some masking tape (duct tape had not made its universal application at this point in world history) we had our net. Our total out of pocket expense to make up a net for each person in the family was $0. Everything was scrap except the masking tape which we happened to have on hand already.

Equipped with our custom nets of matching color (since the net part was cut from the same light green set of curtain sheers), at the end of each day just after dinner but before dusk our entire family (six kids, two parents and a Dalmatian named Dots) went to the back yard and began catching lighting bugs. Our yard was a great producer of bugs but there were much better spots all over our neighborhood. One was a large clump of trees that stayed cool on the hottest summer day. It was fantastic, many of us went there every night. It was my personal favorite spot for harvesting. My siblings had their favorite spots as well. It was quite the family affair as each night we got our nets and went bug catching. At least one of my siblings lost interest early on. Under normal circumstances this was fun; however, in our case we were supplementing our family income to buy an occasional ice cream so to one of us this was just another chore. She was often AWOL when the call for bug duty went out.

Well it didn’t take long until other kids in the neighborhood noticed our pre-nocturnal Mecca experience and followed along to watch what we were doing. All of them were curious, and many of them would catch the bugs with their hands and bring them to one of us who had a net. We had to stop sometimes and show the youngest ones how to catch them gently so as not to injure the bugs. Even kids as young as three can be trained to be gentle and pay attention when they have something valuable to hold onto.

The broker continued to buy the bugs each morning after an evening of us playing capture the bug. Except we were not playing. The first payoff was $5.00, enough for the whole family to go out and have some ice cream on the town. We were so flush with cash each could have whatever flavor they desired. Mine was orange sherbet, still a favorite of mine today. I can’t have a bite without being reminded of my childhood experience with, of all things, bugs. As for the Sister who was mysteriously absent for bug duty she was first in line at the ice cream parlor. We decided to cut her some slack. It later turned out to have been a mistake but she was our Sister.

Our broker set us up on an incentive plan. After we delivered more live bugs we would earn an increasing scale up until we caught a million bugs. Once we got to a million bugs we would get $1.00 per hundred. When I was a kid I always heard, adults speak optimistically about making a million. Well when I first heard about the bug bonus plan I knew we were also going to be making a million, bugs that is. The bonus was really a sliding scale that paid more per hundred bugs as you added to the cumulative total bugs delivered over a given summer. We weren’t just in business we were in big business.

Some of the neighbor kids wanted to catch bugs for money too so we told them about the sliding scale and how they could start at $0.40 per hundred and after they delivered a million bugs they could make $1.00 per hundred. The first night a handful of kids showed up with all kinds of containers full of live bugs. Some kids had butterfly nets which allowed bugs to get out in our kitchen while they were in line; others had large coffee cans and grass of course. Something kids just know, catch a critter in a container and put in some grass if you want it to live. I suppose that’s why years later when I went to Middle East I never saw any lightning bugs in the desert, not as much grass.

We would immediately rescue the bugs in jars with grass, give them a quick chill in the freezer but just enough to knock them out so we could count and pay off on the spot. The freezer was another experiment as it would take about 10 minutes or so in the Frigidaire® to get them to sleep. For a five year, old who just caught 12 bugs, ten minutes in line is an eternity just to get a nickel. In this case that five-year-old was our customer and we had to innovate in order to take care of him and the others in line too. Older kids could easily catch one to 300-400 a night. Some kids wanted cash each night while others let their account build. Accounting was simple, a spiral bound notebook with each kid’s name at the top of a new page. The bank was an ancient bank deposit bag, the kind that was made from plastic coated fabric and zipper along one side. Ours said Southern Savings Bank and Loan, a respected, local bank at the time. It was the same bank that gave kids a little mechanical piggy bank that included a numeric display on it. You got one for free if your parents opened a special account for you for college or some other forever long term goal. The counter would correctly tabulate the total that was inserted and was updated with the addition of each coin. After my account got up to $13.74, I realized only the bank had the key. Great, I thought, a bank with my own money in it that does not pay interest and which I can never withdraw.

I had seen an old movie about the Great Houdini and later read up on how he could pick a lock while upside down dangling over a roaring river while the rope that was holding him was set on fire. My little mechanical bank would soon be open and I would be getting that model airplane in the window at Thornberry’s. After struggling with a safety pin which I had painstakingly modified to be the same as the one Houdini used to escape certain death if the fire had done its work, I finally found my new bank robbing tool, the five-pound hammer. A few good licks and off popped the door behind which my

treasure was laid. As for the bank, well let’s just say its first robbery was also its last. I’m not sure why I robbed my bank at the time. I mean we were rolling in dough from bug money, probably $50 at this point but for some strange reason I had to get my hands on my own money once more. So, it was I had my own money and the family shared in the bug money.

Judging from the sorry state of the bug collection and bug holding containers that showed up every night and with so many bugs getting out of said containers only to spread all through the house, it was obvious the kids needed nets like ours. So, we set up and started producing them and renting them to kids each night. This turned out to be good for the kids because our nets were superior to what they were using. This boost in efficiency meant they could collect more bugs and not as many would escape when waiting in line each night when they came to sell them to us.

Our early nets were simple V-shaped cones which made an easy path for the lightning bugs to crawl up. If they made it to the rim formed by the coat hanger it was CONTACT and off they go, free again. With this early design, you had to gently stir your hand and part of your forearm around the inside to keep driving the relentlessly crawling bugs back to the bottom until you got home.

At the same time, I came up with an idea for a new net design. After catching bugs while walking home I found it was easier to pinch the bottom of the net just above a thick wad of bugs and only slightly that it kept the bugs from climbing up the wall and having to skim them off by continually running your hand along the inside of the net. The bugs were as smart at this as they were about flashing their light. Left unhampered the top most bugs could march right up the side of the shear curtain material and fly away in as little as 8 seconds but with the pinch hardly one could get back.

So back to the drawing board. I made a new template from the old pattern, and a new design with a slight necking about eight inches from the bottom was born. Also, we went to a slightly deeper net which allowed you to shake the bugs off the side wall and they would simply accumulate in the bottom. These two design improvements made for the ultimate net. The bulb region at the bottom worked much like a lobster or crab trap. Once the bugs entered it was just too tough for them to get out, especially as more bugs were added.

The masking tape worked great because it was easily broken to allow you to separate the coat hanger hoop and net with the bugs in it so you could put the entire assembly, bugs and all, right, into the fridge for the sleep treatment. For our family, this worked great since our bug count was group count and we could get to our customers, the other kids, right away and get them paid which kept them happy. We upgraded our nets to new ones and put the old nets into the rental fleet.

Well, business was getting better all the time but loose bugs in the house were a problem. They tended to spread freely to every room. Worse yet they continued doing what lightning bugs do, flash. And by flash, I mean all night long. If you had six or more in your room it was about as easy to fall asleep as it is when there is a lightning storm in the area except there are no noisy thunderbolts. Besides I am convinced it is not the noise of a storm that keeps you up, but it is the lightning. We had a rule in our house. It was forbidden to kill a lighting bug. If you wanted to get rid of it your sole option was to catch it alive and either release it outside which would expose your summer skin to mosquitoes, or put in the refrigerator which was risky because there is always a subset of super powered lightning bugs that no matter how cold the refrigerator was could stay awake and fly out if the door was opened before morning. So, you either stayed in bed and pinched your eyes closed hard enough to shut out the random flashing or you ended up scratching the mosquito bite you got by opening the door to release the offending bug. Either way you simply could not win.

If we were walking in the neighborhood and we saw someone had tossed a worn mop, broom, rake or anything with a good handle on it we grabbed it out of the trash, took it home and used a saw to cut the good stick part off for additional nets.

One day I noticed someone was throwing a large antenna away that had become damaged in a storm. This was an era before cable TV so if you wanted a good TV reception you needed a good antenna. Most antennas have gone the way of the Slide Rule, another technology dinosaur of the past.

Antennas then preferred aluminum tubing for engineering reasons as well as cost and weight. A good antenna was made up of a large number of aluminum tubes arranged in complex 3D geometric configurations to satisfy what I would later come to know as

Maxwell’s Equations in engineering school but, at the time I saw free resources I could use to build something. The best antennas were loaded with aluminum tubes of all sizes and lengths. Apparently, before Mother Nature had her way with this antenna it had been a great one. It had tons of aluminum tubes from short to very long. I went home and came back with a hacksaw to make short work of this trash.

It turned out that the small diameter aluminum tubes were the best. They were much lighter than their wooden counterparts and they were very agile giving their user near super powers for catching even the fastest bug in the neighborhood on any given night. It had an added benefit too. Since it was hollow it eliminated the need to use masking tape which was expensive. All you had to do was to shove what had formerly been the hook part of the coat hanger into the hollow tube and it would remain there. If it was a bit lose all you had to do was bend the wire a bit to make it fit snug.

While most broom and mop handles are uniform in length at about 5 feet resulting in two 30 inch handles, with the aluminum tubes from the antenna we could make the handle any length we wanted. Mine was almost six feet allowing me an extended reach. With its light weight and long handle, I could catch 500 to 800 bugs a night in about 20-35 minutes.

It was not uncommon for the mother of one of the six year olds who were renting a net from us and catching bugs to call us on the phone angrily demanding to know just who gave her young son a dollar and wanting to know just what he did over at the Johns’. She would go on to say that her son told a wild story about kids catching lighting bugs for money and had somehow earned some money. Already knowing something of the reputation of the Johns’ over at 2903 she was prepared to hear just about anything. Except the truth that her son had been collecting bugs for hire by us for two weeks and had opted to get paid when his account reached one dollar. It was at this point the phone went silent while she reconfirmed the story with her son, saying good night quickly and hanging up. The next evening the mom came by with her son and asked if we had a net for her to rent too.

And, so it went all summer long, the day would grow to an end and kids with parents in tow would line up to rent nets, spreading out across the neighborhood like ripples on a pond when a rock is tossed into it. Ripples spreading from our house, each evening it transformed into the epicenter of our new neighborhood. This was a big time lightning bug enterprise for sure.

Before long, we were hitting each milestone total since our total was the cumulative of everyone’s effort not just our own; one thousand, five thousand, ten thousand. The count was building so fast it wasn’t long before we were making 45 cents per hundred, then 50, 55 and 60. At the same time most of our customers, the kids in the neighborhood and sometime a parent who would donate their count to their kids, were getting 40 cents. We all dreamed of what it would be like getting to the ultimate goal of 1 million bugs and splurging on a membership at a fancy swim club. If we got there it would represent about $7,000, which at the time was well above the average annual income of most families in our middle class, baby boomer neighborhood. It was certainly a lot of money.

By the end of June, the weather warmed quickly and the damp moist areas that the bugs preferred began to dry out and so did their numbers. As the days grew longer the period for dusk, that time between when the sun first sets and it gets dark, gets shorter and edges into bedtime for little ones. So, the perfect storm for bug catching peaks in June, and what a glorious month it was each year for our family, we just didn’t always know it like we do now. It was our way to spend family time, repeated like clockwork, driven by the sun and our proximity to cool and damp areas throughout Kentucky in June. A quick dinner with an urgency to clear the kitchen table and make room in the fridge to handle the products we would buy from kids we all knew.

Some of my siblings shared a more active participation in this project while others chose less. For each of us today it is a memory of something we did as a kid. We were too young to know that most others did no such thing. To us it was normal. The net was my first invention and renting nets, my first business.

Many years later we had a party for mom, the same mom that taught me to sew and drove bugs to the broker. I don’t recall her age at the time of the party but she had more than a few grand-children, some in their teens. It was all the typical praise for someone who raised six kids, mostly by herself. My brother had prepared a slideshow with music that stirred all and took everyone back. A very special time for mom, for sure. Lots of people had been invited, family, friends and neighbors alike. Many said kind things about mom and recalled funny stories. If you had been lucky enough to be recruited by us to catch bugs you know what I mean. It was very nice.

Then toward the end, a childhood neighbor with kids of her own got up to speak. She had been a best friend of one of my sisters all through high school. As she spoke many listened casually while others chatted in small groups as she went on for a bit. She then changed the topic. Years ago, she had been one of the children who got all caught up in the craze of catching lighting bugs. I had totally forgotten about the bugs but, she had not.

However, she did not speak about her memory of catching bugs but how she had shared this story with her own children and how it captured their attention and how they were amazed that when their very mother was a child she had gotten caught up in something wonderful and fun. Something that is so different, cool even and it was their very mom who lived it. The room was quiet with every one newly amazed that these two moms before them had been part of a reality that turned out to be a children’s fantasy. What could be cooler?

My own two children were there too and they were very surprised by, not that the story had such a powerful impact on a childhood neighbor’s daughter, but that they were teenagers and while they had heard dozens of family stories repeated so many times they became walking family history experts, somehow this story had missed them and they had not heard of our lighting bug saga until that night. Somehow, I had totally forgotten the story until then. Later that night I filled my kids in on the rest of story before some of my siblings “added” their personal touch which, no surprise, is often a surprise to the rest of us. My kids held the kind of rapt amazement kids have when they are listening to something important to them. I was glad that I could recall it, most of it anyway. As it turned out, my first invention was not in any of the fields I would later work spanning 44 years and growing, was from the span I largely forgotten about, a better method and device to catch lightning bugs. That it took a child’s response to remind me makes me wonder, what else children realize that we as adults never see and no longer can? Children love magic. They recognize it instantly and think it’s perfectly normal. They can find it anytime anywhere and in any circumstance. By way of example, I recently gave a gift to my grandnephew on his first birthday. I used a very fancy box that I had repurposed so he could play not with the gift inside but the box itself. This box had been engineered much like products that Apple sells. The box sends a powerful message that what is inside is very special. Some of the adults in attendance wanted to “help” my grandnephew open the box to get to the prize.

As adults, we enjoy magic too, but often it’s just too hard for us to see. On the rare occasion, we do, some are quick to doubt it. For adults to see magic and experience new things or the magic of our youth, sometimes we need a child to teach us. It is up to us to see if we are still able to see what is obvious to the child.