Dandelion Wine
Ray Bradbury
Doubleday & Co. 1957
This title is not the hallmark Bradbury title the comes to peoples minds when you mention Ray Bradbury. Immediately either Fahrenheit 451 or Something Wicked This Way Comes is retrieved from memory. Both fine titles and First editions of these are very expensive and collectible. Even The Martian Chronicles (1950) or The Illustrated Man (1951) may rank higher in the minds Mr. Bradbury’s followers.
However, Mr. Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, which is a collection of semi- autobiographical short stories, that grew from an original short story first published under the same name for Gourmet magazine in 1953, captures an essence that has stayed with me since its first reading.
Twelve year old Douglas Spaulding is the protagonist and he portrays the activities of 1928 small town America. The setting is pre-Great Depression, pre second world war. A simpler time which stirs Mr. Bradbury’s nostalgia.
From the first chapter where from the cupola of his grandfather’s house he views from his lofty height the landscape of the small town bathed in summer to the last chapter where Spaulding and a friend are ordering lime-vanilla ice at the soda fountain, the aura of times gone by is captured.
Chapter three provides the title. To quote from the work, “Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered.” I could not find the reference, but it seemed to me that ‘summer in a bottle’ was also at least implied.
There is a quip about children and adults being separate races, and that explains why they can’t get along. And a skit about an elderly woman trying to explain to two young girls that she was once also a child to the disbelieve of the children.
As this cold winter drags on pick up a copy of Dandelion Wine, take a dip into the days of front porch swings, the squeak of screen doors, fireflies, trolley cars and soda fountains. To borrow from Heinlein, it’s a door into summer.
Dandelion Wine is a book worth your time.
Notes:
I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. Bradbury at a book signing many years ago. Somewhere around here I have an autographed Mockingbird Books business card laminated. And a 1975 reprinted signed copy of Dandelion Wine, sits behind a glass door lawyer bookcase in our living room.