To every magazine writer, if he or she is lucky, comes one beautiful idea, both topical and evergreen, that will forever establish writer and subject, together, in the firmament of great stories. Gay Talese on DiMaggio, A. J. Liebling on Earl Long, me on worms.

It was l977, when I—who shouldn’t be the one to say so but who else remembers?—was hot. Magazines were hot, and I was freelancing for the best ones. Even my home state was hot, because Jimmy Carter, a Georgian, had just become president. And worms were hot.

Worms as in red wigglers, night crawlers, and so on. The trendiness of worms owed something to the fact that President Carter’s first cousin Hugh operated a big-time worm farm back home in Plains, Georgia. Hugh’s son, Hugh Junior, told the New York Times that his father “started out with a wooden coffin…full of gray crickets and a washtub full of worms. He probably sells 30 million worms a year now.” At that point Hugh Junior, whose master’s thesis at the University of Pennsylvania had been on the worm-raising business, was in charge of organizing the White House.

So you had that angle. But worms—which Aristotle called “the intestines of the earth”—transcended the presidency. “You would not be here and I would not be here today if it weren’t for the worms,” said an architect and worm fancier in Atlanta. “The only reason we’re alive is because of that eight inches of topsoil the worms created.” It was said that worms would eat anything even remotely organic—cardboard, baby diapers—and excrete it as 400-proof loam. It was said that the sportfishing market required some $80 million worth of worms annually, and that there was inexhaustible demand for worms as garbage disposers, as companions to large potted plants in industrial offices, and as food. The 1976 earthworm recipe contest staged by North American Bait Farms in Ontario, California, had been won by an Applesauce Surprise Cake that had edged out earthworm patties and earthworm curry. Worms were said to be 70 percent protein, high in vitamin D, and—this had the ring of truth—free of bones and gristle.