In the summer I can sit on my front porch and read the same book I do every summer, called, “Dandelion Wine,” by Ray Bradbury. It is truly sunrise captured in a bottle in a great read. We used to call it, “stream of consciousness.” I like to call my favorite book, “stream of pure poetry,” as every page captures your imagination and takes you back to the summer of a simpler time, 1928.
For example, the opening paragraph is one of my favorites: “It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease to bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer…”
The book is about two brothers, Douglas Spaulding, 12, and his younger brother, Tom, and how they spent their summer, not with their heads stuck in a cell phone, or television, or some video game. They spent it playing in the woods, helping their neighbors, riding on the last ride of the trolley laid to rest at the far end of town, creating their own adventures as neighbors sipped lemonade and told stories on their front porches. They helped their father pick dandelions and make dandelion wine that looked like liquid gold when the sun shown through it.
It was a peaceful time of picnics at the lake, bands playing music at the gazebo in the park, climbing trees, and conversing with an old neighbor who told porch stories of long ago and far away, their very own “time machine.” It was doing chores for two old ladies who owned a green machine, electric car that would only go 15 miles an hour on quiet little streets, a Sunday drive for fun.
Yes, I will proudly date myself to say our fun as kids was for my friend, Tina, and I to take a long walk up the road just to pet our favorite horse. It was my friend, Mary, her siblings, my brothers, and I traipsing through the woods where we built forts out of logs, branches, and moss, and swung on vines across a creek. It was a time and place where we simply laid in the green cool grass and named the shapes of clouds. And, summer was just not summer without a trip to People’s drugstore to get an ice cream cone or root beer float.
As our summertime drips away like water from a garden hose, I’m hanging on for dear life. Because it is the “life” in the green grass, sunrises and sunsets, in the songs of birds, in the laughter of children, that give life back to us, if just for a season.
Anne Mount is an award-winning journalist, author, and screenwriter. She is a native Daytonian.
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