The 42nd Parallel

The Camera Eye (3)

o qu’il a des beaux yeux said the lady in the seat opposite but She said that was no way to talk to children and the little boy felt all hot and sticky but it was dusk and the lamp shaped like half a melon was coming on dim red and the train rumbled and suddenly I’ve been asleep and it’s black dark and the blue tassel bobs on the edge of the dark shade shaped like a melon and everywhere there are pointed curved shadows (the first time He came He brought a melon and the sun was coming in through the tall lace windowcurtains and when we cut it the smell of melons filled the whole room) No don’t eat the seeds deary they give you appendicitis

but you’re peeking out of the window into the black rumbling dark suddenly ranked with squat chimneys and you’re scared of the black smoke and the puffs of flame that flare and fade out of the squat chimneys Potteries dearie they work there all night Who works there all night? Workingmen and people like that laborers travailleurs greasers

you were scared

but now the dark was all black again the lamp in the train and the sky and everything had a blueblack shade on it and She was telling a story about

Longago Beforetheworldsfair Beforeyouwereborn and they went to Mexico on a private car on the new international line and the men shot antelope off the back of the train and big rabbits jackasses they called them and once one night Longago Beforetheworldsfair Beforeyouwereborn one night Mother was so frightened on account of all the rifleshots but it was allright turned out to be nothing but a little shooting they’d been only shooting a greaser that was all

that was in the early days