Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-11-15

TWO decades have passed since the
modernization got under way. House.
wives along the lower Waccamaw are be-
ginning to comprehend little the mean
ing of home demonstration agent and
the uses of a community club at the
school house. But they are still little
bewildered about it. Another generation,
a generation that Is growing up and
away from the black canopy of fear that
has Swallowed the swamp, a generation
that can look with Indifferent tolerance
upon an exceedingly minor and not at all
menacing Haiti, is on the threshold Of
CrueSoe's Island, with it's face toward
horizon with no brooding black cloud
upon it.
A diminishing older generation still
goes hunting for bear and talks in
hushed, awed whispers of the legends OF
their grandparents and looks wondering
ly, not quite believingly, upon the younger
generation that goes blithely about in
automobiles, along roads that run
straight where trails used to go wind
ingly, and which talks in cadence that
seems strange to the old-timers.
One of this older generation is old man
Buck Clewis. From the day when Mr..
Council first went bear hunting along
the lower Waccamaw to the day of his
death he priced ClewiS' friendship above
that of many distinguished people. There
was, there is, a peculiar something about
the ancient bear hunter of the Swamps.
His dark eyes have light in them that
is at once defiant and pleading, at once
bitter and soft, that is afraid and yet
trusting, derisive and yet friendly. In
him Mr.. Council found amending delight.
To find ClewiS' duplicate, outwardly,
would not require much searching along
the countrysideS Of France. His voice,
softened in the mellow air of the swampS.
is pitched high against the roof of his
mouth, like Frenchmans, and his syl-
tables are clipped and precise, even when
he is well along in the colossal tale of
how he once inadvertently caught the
largest bear that he ever saw.
It happened in the dusk Of early night
fall when Mr.. Clewis was going along a
shaded path in search of sow that had
wandered from her pen. She was valu-
able sow, and it would not do to allow
her to wander alone in the woods.
bear might get her.
Presently Mr.. Clewis saw her, ambling
along, q Od1k S1ldOOW IA II1dU udy I6
was very vigorous and agile man and
he launched himself in sort of flying
tackle, aiming to land on her back and
divert her toward the pen. He would ride
her home. But it was not the Grant sow
about whose neck Mr.. Clewis locked his
sinewy arms. It was quite the biggest
bear he ever saw, and the ensuing ride
has become an epic of the SwampS. It
delighted Mr.. Council endlessly when he
would get the old man to tell it.
THERE will not be another such audi
>ence as Mr.. Council was-neither for
the bear story nor for talking over dimly
recollected things that MIR. Council un-
derstood. Nothing has been the same
since Mr.. Council first came to Cruesoe'S
ISland-and nothing can ever be the
same now that he will not come to it
any more.
There are still bear in the Swamps, but
they have retreated little from the
highway that cuts through to the sea,
and along which clatter the BUSES haul
ing the children to the fine brick school
house, where they all learn to read and
to forget that long time ago there were
frightful things that happened. The
teachers seem somehow not to care about
those terrible days, but Mr.. Council knew
and understood. They talk about the
improvement that has come to the
neighborhOod, about enlightenment. But
for old man Buck Clewis the light somee
how has gone out, and when darkness
finally overcomes the country of Haiti, as
his grandmother was sure it would there
will not be anybody with whom he can