My Big Fat Pile of Library Books--Dandelion Wine

There it was on the Middle School reading list.

The best summer novel ever of all time.

I hadn't read it since I was a teenager.

I remembered the part about the new tennis shoes

that felt like marshmallows and made you run faster than all get out...faster than antelopes and gazelles.

and able to leap high and wide, with your feet in total springy comfort.

But by the end of summer, they would just be a regular old pair of shoes.

My own father one time made some dandelion wine in the basement.

I do recall gathering flowers for the project. (my dad was big on projects...weaving and knitting and homemade lamps...radio control aircraft...needlepoint, ham radio...all undertaken with the precision and discipline of an engineer and the soul of an artist)

Anyway. The wine was too sweet and odd for my taste. The main ingredient was figs, not dandelions in his recipe.

Here's a recipe for dandelion wine which is heavy on the citrus and relies on a full 6 cups of sugar. I guess it takes a hearty amount of some sort of sugar ro make wine.

It might be good, but I don't think I ever want to try dandelion wine again. It could never taste like an August day. Like a day in the life of Douglas Spaulding in the summer of 1928.

(My brother and I one time made beer milkshakes but that was a different novel and a different author and a different story)

I do love this book.

I love it better now than when I was in high school. I am sure I would have entirely missed the point when I was in 6th grade.

I think I'll read it every summer until I die.

It's all about waking up and finding life and death and youth and old age and danger and comfort.