Dandelion Wine (Green Town, #1)

by Ray Bradbury

Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.

Along the way, I sat me down to breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with the long dead and much loved.

The people there were gods and midgets and knew themselves mortal and so the midgets walked tall so as not to embarrass the gods and the gods crouched so as to make the small ones feel at home.

I see my grandfather there looking up at that strange drifting light, thinking his own still thoughts. I see me, my eyes filled with tears, because it was all over, the night was done, I knew there would never be another night like this.

And here the paths, made or yet unmade, that told of the need of boys traveling, always traveling, to be men.

“Yesterday Ching Ling Soo died. Yesterday the Civil War ended right here in this town forever. Yesterday Mr. Lincoln died right here and so did General Lee and General Grant and a hundred thousand others facing north and south. And yesterday afternoon, at Colonel Freeleigh’s house, a herd of buffalo-bison as big as all Green Town, Illinois, went off the cliff into nothing at all. Yesterday a whole lot of dust settled for good. And I didn’t even appreciate it at the time. It’s awful, Tom, it’s awful! What we going to do without all those soldiers and Generals Lee and Grant and Honest Abe; what we going to do without Ching Ling Soo? I never dreamed so many people could die so fast, Tom. But they did. They sure did!”

“You just won’t admit you like crying, too. You cry just so long and everything’s fine. And there’s your happy ending. And you’re ready to go back out and walk around with folks again.

Explosion! Concussion! Illumination! Delight!

Was this one from the deep green sea? Had that one been shot from blue summer air? Was it a swimming food or a flying food, had it pumped blood or chlorophyll, had it walked or leaned after the sun? No one knew. No one asked. No one cared.