Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Cold Fire on a Warm Disney Night

We head down a flight of stairs to our table in The Edison cocktail bar at Disney Springs, deep within the lower level recesses of a steampunk homage to a 1920s era electric plant. Disney considers it an “Industrial Gothic” representation of a time when imagination ruled the day and innovators released electricity like fireflies into the night sky. Thus, the name Edison, but I can’t help feeling that there is a spark of Tesla in the air. Sure enough, one area within the restaurant is named The Tesla Lounge honoring that other pioneer from a time when new technology sprang to the forefront of great minds, all working and competing to light up a dark and limited world.
 

It was a time when it seemed that Disney’s Imagineers were loose on Earth, changing it virtually overnight and filling us with wonder at every turn. As a native Chicagoan I am enthralled with the 1893 World’s Fair, the “White City” where for the first time incandescent lights in vast numbers seemed to turn the Earth on its axis, shifting the setting sun late into the night and extending Man’s reach beyond his daytime grasp. I imagine it to be a sensation much like the one I get when visiting the Magic Kingdom after dark.

I prepare to work my way through a menu of namesake options, slowly sipping my Edison cocktail, sharing an order of Electri-fries, bracing for an Edison burger and completing my repast by indulging in a Triple Chocolate Voltage Cake.

We proceed from dinner to the Magic Kingdom by way of an enjoyable series of Disney transportation connections, boat, bus and Monorail, through the flowering Mickey gateway under the rumbling overhead heritage railroad and onward down Main Street. At night this is a modern day White City, bustling with wide-eyed guests, balloons of all colors, tasty treats and delicious smells, irresistible merchandise and characters come to life and posing for pictures. During the Christmas season the scene is adorned with wreaths, red ribbons and garlands of colored lights. The street takes you back in time and further into the park along embedded trolley tracks to an open area where you must choose which way to go. But you’ll be excused if you linger just a while, stunned into silence by the spectacle that is the illuminated Cinderella castle.

We pause to take in the sights and sounds, admiring the courage of young parents with strollers who navigate the twisting pathways filled with upward looking travelers, wandering without purpose and lost in the wonder of it all. Something catches my eye to the right, a small tree thick with leaves and alive with luminescent green sparkles that dance like Tinkerbell throughout. This is part of the Disney magic. Lighting up this tree is an unnecessary little extra in the midst of big ticket displays, the kind of detail that Disney does so well. The tree appears to be alive with the dancing glow of a thousand fireflies. It is an artificial reminder of the sparkling windswept gold that illuminated the nights from mid June to early September in the Midwest of my youth.

And suddenly, I am a child again, mesmerized by the cold fire that blinked just out of reach and kept us running and leaping with old pickle jars, slapping metal lids onto glass containers as we collected and examined our captured treasure. Their glow faded long after we were called inside for the night, released by caring parents who were taught long ago by Jiminy Cricket to wish upon a star.

But never was there a more industrious young Edison than the summer I responded to a local newspaper ad. 

“Collect fireflies for science. Research study will pay one cent for each insect collected. Minimum of 500 needed. Will pick up.”

Further instructions were given via the phone number provided. The insects were to be kept frozen until the appointed pickup date. A scientist would retrieve the bugs and make payment. A scientist! I pictured Charles Darwin or Thomas Edison visiting my house.

I began with the traditional method in my back yard – hands and a glass jar. It was slow work. According to my calculations, I would spend seven summers achieving my goal. In need of a more plentiful hunting ground, I decided to head down the street to the nearby forest preserve with a butterfly net and a covered plastic bucket.

Among the most memorable things I’ve seen in my life, including the Northern Lights, shooting stars and an active volcano, the sight that greeted me when I parted a dense green curtain of leaves and entered the woods that night ranks very high. Several steps beyond the trees along a trail I knew by day, the numbers of fireflies exceeded anything I had imagined. They blinked with a rapidity and intensity lacking among the more sluggish backyard variety. The forest seemed to be decorated with glittering Italian lights for al fresco dining in every direction. I paused to enjoy and comprehend what I was witnessing and gasped, “I’m rich!”

Then the mosquitoes found me, ferocious, aggressive and numerous. About ten of them for each firefly if I had to guess. In the spasm that ensued, I managed to hold onto my net and bucket, stumbling, choking and running out of the woods past the tree line toward home to find a bottle of insect repellent. They entered my mouth, buzzed in my ears and bounced off my eyeballs. My arms were coated with a brown and fur-like swarm of living pumps, nose down and drilling for blood.

It took me only a few nights to collect the requisite number of bugs. A swelling plastic lunch bag became the source of comments from my mother and sister. Bugs in the freezer near our frozen food! Disgusting! I eagerly awaited my visit from a scientist, and of course, five dollars, the next day.

            “But you’re a girl!” I blurted out when I answered the door.

The young lab technician laughed and said, “Girls can be scientists too,” as she handed me a five-dollar bill, examined the baggie of bugs and proceeded to explain that she was doing research on bioluminescence. She wasn’t allowed to comment on the eventual purpose of the experiments, but thanked me and told me to call again when I collected more. She held up the baggie and just said, “Hmm” as if perhaps mine was the first supply she had seen.

But that was the end of my bug-collecting job, with the exception of one instance when I tried to boost my back yard display with a seeding supply of captured living transplants. I realized the futility of my attempt and also decided that a penny each added up too slowly. It was time-consuming work. Time that could be better spent mowing lawns. And a nagging guilt affected my productivity with each bug I collected, murderous little maniac that I'd become. I loved those magical little creatures and wanted to keep them around.

I am shaken from my memory by an eager co-conspirator, tugging at my hand with a plea for a Mickey Ice Cream Bar. I admire the tree and the laser lights that have transported me. Unlike a neighbor’s lawn at Christmas with a crudely staked light projector that points roughly at the side of a house, I can’t tell where the Disney lights originate. They are as much a part of our evening as warm weather, ice cream and fireworks, and the park has filled me with a bliss that’s hard to explain, immersing me in sensory treats and summoning my inner child with transient wonders, like Tinkerbell soaring overhead from the top of a nearby castle.