Dandelion Wine

Each summer, the Spauldings place their area rugs on the lawn, grab wire rug beaters, and, as a group, slap the rugs with the beaters until a cloud of dust rises up. Led by Great-Grandma, the family laughs and coughs and points at the stains, which stand as a record of the year’s history. They hang the rugs on the wash lines and continue the beating. This scene is contrasted with the neat, tidy house of 72-year-old Mrs. Bentley. She has collected many mementos over the years and keeps them packed away in trunks. One mid-summer day, Tom and two girls named Alice and Jane visit Mrs. Bentley, who declares that she once was a girl just like Alice and Jane. When the girls accuse her of lying, Mrs. Bentley feels troubled, as though her childhood has been taken away. In the evening, she shows the children items and photographs from her childhood, but they disbelieve that the photo is of Mrs. Bentley. The girls rise and they thank her for the trinkets and the photo, then hurry away with her mementos. Mrs. Bentley, stunned, feels as if a piece of her life has been pilfered. She lies awake that night, wondering if the past is just an illusion. She realizes that, even if once she was young, she’s not anymore and can’t get her childhood back.

The next morning, the two girls return, hoping for more items from the little girl that they believe Mrs. Bentley tries to impersonate. The old lady, now aware that those items no longer fit into her current life, happily lets them rummage through trunks filled with the clothes, books, skates, and dolls of her youth. Then they help her lug the rest of it out back, where Mrs. Bentley makes a bonfire of her old possessions. For the rest of the summer, the two girls and Tom visit Mrs. Bentley when the ice cream wagon rolls past, and they all sit and enjoy cool refreshments. When the children ask, Mrs. Bentley insists that she’s 72, always has been, never had a first name, and never was young and pretty. Satisfied, the kids remain her friends. Later, Douglas and Tom compare journal notes. Douglas has accounted for all the major events thus far in the summer: the date of his first “Eskimo Pie,” the day he bought his new tennis shoes, the first day he ran barefoot on the grass. Tom tells Douglas about a recent insight, and Douglas writes it down: “Old people never were children!” Tom adds: “And it’s kind of sad […] There’s nothing we can do to help them” (103).

Charlie Woodman informs his friends Douglas and John that Colonel Freeleigh has a time machine. They go to the colonel’s residence, knock, and enter quietly. Inside sits an old, thin man who looks up, smiles, and welcomes Charlie. The boy asks the colonel to talk about Boston in 1910. Freeleigh ponders a moment, then remembers: “Why, Ching Ling Soo, of course!” (106) Freeleigh sat in the front row when the great magician Ching Ling Soo attempted to perform the famous bullet trick and catch a bullet from a fired gun in his teeth. When a volunteer fired the gun, Ching Ling Soo screamed and fell to the ground dead, his face a mask of red. Next, Charlie asks about Pawnee Bill. The colonel recalls being out on the prairie in 1875 with a man named Pawnee Bill, watching as a great cloud of dust, 50 miles wide, approached them, and a giant herd of 200,000 buffalo hurtled past.

Freeleigh pauses for breath, as if after a long run. He recovers and greets Charlie again, as if for the first time. Douglas starts to ask about the time machine, but Charlie cuts him off, saying, “My gosh, you’re dumb!” (110) John prompts the colonel to talk about the Civil War. Freeleigh remembers battles, but the war happened nearly 70 years earlier, and he can’t recall which side he fought on—he lived on both sides of the divide. Charlie asks if he recalls any great victories, but Freeleigh says that nobody wins in a war. He was at Shiloh and Antietam and saw the first puffs of smoke at Fort Sumter. Instead of war stories, he sings snippets from the old camp songs that the soldiers sang in the evening. Charlie looks at Douglas, who agrees that the colonel really is a time machine. Freeleigh asks what they mean; Charlie explains that it’s the moniker they’ve given him among themselves. The colonel ponders this silently. The boys excuse themselves and depart. As they step outside, the colonel leans out a window, calls to them, and says, “You’re right! Why didn’t I think of it before! A Time Machine, by God, a Time Machine!” (114) Late that night, Tom wakes to find Douglas scribbling in his journal. Douglas explains that, of all the transport available in town—the trolley, the neighbors’ electric runabout, Douglas’s tennis shoes—the best travel is back into the past with Colonel Freeleigh.

Miss Roberta and Miss Fern hurry up into their attic, slam the door shut, and lock it. Panicked, they hold each other, terrified. Their little electric runabout, the Green Machine, has gotten them into big trouble. They peer out the window, expecting to see the police, but instead they see young Douglas walking up to their front door to ask for a ride on the runabout. They ignore his knock, and he goes away. They recall the day when salesman William Tara arrived and proceeded to talk them into buying the runabout. Silent, comfortable, and easy to drive, it could take the two elderly ladies anywhere they wanted to go in town. They made the down payment and began cruising through the neighborhoods, sitting regally in the smooth two-seater with breezes gently cooling their faces. It was all wonderful until just that day, when they rounded a corner and knocked over Mr. Quartermain, who crumpled to stillness on the ground. Terrified, the ladies kept driving, got home, and are now hiding. Finally, the two sisters decide to go downstairs and make dinner. They agree to tell no one about the accident, and they also agree never to drive the runabout again. Later, Fern scans the evening newspaper and sighs with relief to see that there is no mention of the accident, and no harm done.

The next day, all the kids get free rides on the trolley. It’s the last day for the service; after today, motorman Mr. Tridden will get a pension, and a bus service will replace the trolley. Tridden drives Douglas, Charlie, and several other kids out past the city limits and onto an old track into the countryside. The trolley halts near a stream that flows past an old, abandoned bandstand. Tridden pulls out big picnic baskets that the kids help tote over to the stream’s edge. Everyone eats sandwiches and fruit, and Tridden tells stories about the old bandstand, with its musicians and the audiences promenading in their best clothes. The group piles back into the trolley, which rolls back into town, and they smell the arcing electric power and feel the brass railings for the last time. The boys agree that buses won’t be nearly as nice as the trolley. Men will soon pave over the tracks, but Douglas will always remember the trolley’s chime.