Dandelion Wine

Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding wakes early in the third-story cupola of his grandparents’ boarding house next door, leans out the window, gazes over the tree-lined neighborhood, and feels the first stirrings of summer. Once a week, his parents let him sleep here. He rises early on this first dawn of the season and ritualistically points his finger at streetlights, which wink out seemingly on command, then points at houses as their lights come on. He tells his grandparents’ house to wake, and shortly he smells hot pancakes on the griddle. On cue, neighbors begin appearing; a trolley rolls past. He points to the east: The dawn brightens, and “[s]ummer 1928 [begins]” (4).

Dad drives Douglas and the boy’s 10-year-old brother Tom, to the country to gather strawberries. Dad points out the flowers, the loamy earth, the sounds, and silences, and he notes how the sky and trees are woven together. Douglas feels a great anticipation that something important is about to happen. His father spies some fox grapes, and the spell is broken.

The three sit on a log and eat lunch. Tom chatters about all the statistics he’s collected from his own life: 4,000 sleeps, 600 peaches eaten, and 192 Felix the Cat cartoons viewed. Douglas still thinks that something very unusual, if shy and harmless, wants to contact him out here. Tom goes on about a snowflake he caught in a matchbox back in February and put it in the freezer. Douglas, sensing a tidal wave of force about to descend on them, only nods, eyes shut. Tom pounces on his brother and while they wrestle, Douglas feels the energy wave break atop them. The two boys lie there, breathing hard, and Douglas suddenly realizes what has washed over him: “I’m alive.”

His fingers bleeding slightly from the tussle, Douglas lies back and holds his hand up toward the sky, and “his eyes peered like sentinels through the portcullis of a strange castle out along a bridge, his arm, to those fingers where the bright pennant of blood quivered in the light” (12). The world around him suddenly is intense with life. In all his 12 years, he realizes, this is the first time he has felt the full wonder of it all. He thinks, “I want to feel all there is to feel” (14), and he promises himself never to forget that he’s alive.

Douglas and Tom gather dandelions from Grandpa’s yard. The old man lets them grow wild, then squeezes them into wine in the old press in the basement, the essence combined with pure rainwater from the barrel outside. Stoppered in old ketchup bottles, the wine waits for months, and people can take a sip to bring summer into the chill of winter for a moment.

Sometimes, when snow batters the windows and noses are filled with colds and flus, Grandma brings up a bottle and serves it out as a medicine to each patient, including relatives and boarders. But for now, watching the flowers being pressed into liquid, she’s content to murmur the magic words: “Dandelion wine. Dandelion wine. Dandelion wine” (20).

Hurrying to catch up with a group of running boys, Douglas halts at the edge of the ravine. Paths snake down through the eerie gulch and up the other side toward various destinations: the icehouse, the beach, Saturday matinees, farmlands, wilderness. Douglas marvels at how the ravine’s wildness grows out each year, trying to swallow up the nearby buildings. Douglas’s friends John Huff and Charlie Woodman call to him to catch up. He looks down at his old shoes and realizes that he needs a new pair. He mentions this to his parents, and his father asks why the boy can’t simply wear last year’s tennis shoes. Douglas says that “last year’s pair were dead inside” (27). He wore them well, learned that he couldn’t actually leap over everything in them, and now they just won’t work anymore. A new pair, though, would reignite the dream of running and jumping.

Dad tells Douglas to save up for them, but Douglas knows summer will be half over by the time he has enough to buy the shoes. Lying in bed that night, he tells himself the main reasons why he must have new tennis shoes: to catch up with friends and avoid enemies.

The next day, Douglas shows up at old Mr. Sanderson’s shoe store with some cash and a proposal. He offers to work off the difference between the money he has and the price of the tennis shoes. Sanderson gives the boy a pair of the shoes and a list of errands. Douglas puts his new shoes on and is about to leave, but Sanderson stops him, asking, “How do they feel? […] Antelopes? […] Gazelles?” (33). Douglas ponders, nods, and darts off down the street.

Following Tom’s example, Douglas starts making lists. He tells his brother that, each summer, they always spend half the time doing the same things: picking fox grapes, making dandelion wine, buying new tennis shoes. The other half is spent doing new things. This year, his list of new things includes being alive—Tom protests that that’s old, but Douglas says noticing it is new—and learning that Dad and Grandpa don’t actually know everything, which turns out to be okay. He’s also making a list of traditional summer rituals, like the first watermelon to eat, the first near-drowning in the lake, and the first dandelion harvest.

Another ritual is porch swings. Grandpa and Douglas pull out the swing from storage, dust it off, and chain it to eyelets in the porch ceiling. After dinner, people seat themselves on porches all over town, smoking pipes and cigars, fanning themselves, knitting, eating “Eskimo Pies,” and chatting idly by the hour. Grandpa, Douglas, and Tom go for an evening stroll past the cigar store, where a group of men argue about the various forms of doom that threaten humanity. Town jeweler Leo Auffmann protests that the speakers are wallowing in a “graveyard.” Grandpa suggests that Leo, known for his inventiveness, build a contraption that makes things better. Douglas chimes in, saying, “Invent us a happiness machine!” (44) The men laugh. Leo complains that machines keep causing disasters, but he decides that he will build a Happiness Machine.

Charlie and John and a few other boys take Douglas away on some adventure, and Grandpa and Tom walk themselves home. Later that night, Mother calls out into the night for Douglas. She calls several times, and Tom notices her nervousness. She takes Tom’s hand, and they walk down the street toward the ravine. On the way, she worries aloud about the Lonely One, a killer who’s on the loose. She promises to spank Douglas when he gets home. Tom knows little of mortality beyond seeing his little sister, years earlier, lying dead in her crib, blue-faced and staring. They reach the edge of the ravine, where he feels Mother’s hand tremble and realizes that his own parent, a bastion of safety, is afraid, and that being an adult doesn’t protect a person from the terrors of the night.

His mom starts down the path into the ravine. She says the kids always ignore her warnings and travel through the ravine, and maybe someday he won’t come out. Finally, Douglas’s voice comes from across the ravine. He and his friends climb up to her; they’re laughing. Her fear suddenly gone, Mother is angry: “Young man, you’re going to get a licking” (58).