Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury Page A

wife!
    In the porch swing beside him, Lena's uneasy silence was an opinion.
    Silent now, too, head back, he listened to the elm leaves above hissing in the wind.
    Don't forget, he told himself, that sound, too, must be in the machine.
    A minute later the porch swing, the porch, stood empty in the dark.
    Grandfather smiled in his sleep.
    Feeling the smile and wondering why it was there, he awoke. He lay quietly listening, and the smile was explained.
    For he heard a sound which was far more important than birds or the rustle of new leaves. Once each year he woke this way and lay waiting for the sound which meant that summer had officially begun. And it began on a morning such as this when a boarder, a nephew, a cousin, a son or a grandson came out on the lawn below and moved in consecutively smaller quadrangles north and east and south and west with a clatter of rotating metal through the sweet summer grass. Clover blossoms, the few unharvested dandelion fires, ante, sticks, pebbles, remnants of last year's July Fourth squibs and punks, but predominantly clear green, a fount leaped up from the chattering mower. A cool soft fount; Grandfather imagined it tickling his legs, spraying his warm face, filling his nostrils with the timeless scent of a new season begun, with the promise that, yes, we'll all live another twelve months.
    God bless the lawn mower, he thought. Who was the fool who made January first New Year/s Day' No, they should set a man to watch the grasses across a million Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa lawns, and on that morning when it was long enough for cutting, instead of rachets and hems and yelling, there should be a great swelling symphony of lawn mowers reaping fresh grass upon the prairie lands. Instead of confetti and serpentine, people should throw grass spray at each other on the one day each year that really represents Beginning!
    He snorted at his own lengthy discussion of the affair, went to the window and leaned out into the mellow sun shine, and sure enough, there was a boarder, a young newspaperman named Forrester, just finishing a row.
    "Morning, Mr. Spaulding!"
    "Give 'em hell, Bill!" cried Grandpa heartily, and soon downstairs eating Grandma's breakfast, with the window open so the rattling buzz of the lawn mower lolled about his eating.
    "It gives you confidence," Grandpa said. "That lawn mower. Listen to it!"
    "Won't be using the lawn mower much longer." Grandma set down a stack of wheat cakes. "They got a new kind of grass Bill Forrester's putting in this morning, never needs cutting. Don't know what they call it, but it just grows so long and no longer."
    Grandpa stared at the woman. "You're finding a poor! way to joke with me."
    "Go look for yourself. Land's sake," said Grandma, "it was Bill Forrester's idea. The new grass is waiting in little flats by the side of the house. You just dig small holes here and there and put the new grass in spots. By the end of the year the new grass kills off the old, and you sell your lawn mower."
    Grandpa was up from his chair, through the hall, and out the front door in ten seconds.
    Bill Forrester left his machine and came over, smiling, squinting in the sun. "That's right," he said. "Bought the grass yesterday. Thought, while I'm on vacation I'd just plant it for you."
    "Why wasn't I consulted about this? It's my lawn!" cried Grandfather.
    "Thought you'd appreciate it, Mr. Spaulding."
    "Well, I don't think I do appreciate it. Let's see this confounded grass of yours."
    They stood by the little square pads of new grass. Grandpa toed at it with one end of his shoe suspiciously. "Looks like plain old grass to me. You sure some horse trader didn't catch you early in the morning when you weren't fully awake?"
    "I've seen the stuff growing in California. Only so high and no higher. If it survives our climate it'll save us getting out here next year, once a week, to keep the darned stuff trimmed."
    "That's the trouble with your generation," said Grandpa. "Bill, I'm