Dandelion Wine / Вино из одуванчиков. Рэй Брэдбери

sometimes you have to build for others. I’ve been thinking what to put in. Motion pictures? Radios? Stereoscopic viewers? All those in one place so any man can run his hand over it and smile and say, ‘Yes, sir, that’s happiness’.”

      Yes, he thought, to make a mechanism that in spite of wet feet, various troubles, rumpled beds, and those three-in-the-morning hours when monsters ate your soul, would manufacture happiness, like that magic salt mill that, thrown in the ocean, made salt forever and turned the sea to brine. Who wouldn’t put all his soul into inventing a machine like that? he asked the world, he asked the town, he asked his 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 rustling in the wind.

      Don’t forget, he told himself, that sound, too, must be in the machine.

      Grandfather smiled in his sleep.

      He awoke and lay quietly listening, and the smile was explained: he heard a sound which was far more important than birds, or the rustle of new leaves. This sound meant that summer had officially begun. A cool soft fountain of sweet summer grass leaped up from the chattering mower. 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. What fool 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 rockets and hymns and yelling, there should be a great 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 went to the window and looked out into the sunshine, 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 went downstairs to eat Grandma’s breakfast, with the window open so the buzz of the lawn-mower accompanied his eating.

      “It gives you confidence,” Grandpa said. “That lawnmower. Listen to it!”

      “Won’t be using the lawn-mower much longer,” Grandma said. “Bill Forrester’s putting in a new kind of grass that never needs cutting.”

      Grandpa stared at the woman. “You’re finding a poor way to joke with me.”

      “Go look for yourself,” said Grandma, “it was Bill Forrester’s idea. The new grass is waiting in little trays 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.

      “That’s right,” Bill Forrester 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.”

      Grandpa looked at the new grass 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, next year we won’t have to cut it once a week.”

      “That’s the trouble with your generation,” said Grandpa. “Bill, I’m ashamed ofyou, you a newspaperman. All the things in life that were put here to savor, you eliminate. Save time, save work, you say.” He nudged the grass trays disrespectfully. “Bill, when you’re my age, you’ll find out it’s the little savors and little things that count more than big ones. A walk on a spring morning is better than an eighty-mile ride in a car, you know why? Because it’s full of flavors, full of a lot of things growing. You’ve time to seek and find. I know – you’re after the bigjobs now, and I suppose that’s fit and proper. But for a young man working on a newspaper, you got to look for grapes as well as watermelons. If you had your way you’d pass a law to abolish all the little jobs, the little things. But then you’d leave yourselves nothing to do between the big jobs and you’d have a devil of a time thinking up things to do so you wouldn’t go crazy. Instead of that, why not let nature show you a few things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life, son.”

      Bill Forrester was smiling quietly at him.

      “I know,” said Grandpa, “I talk too much.”

      “There’s no one I’d rather hear.”

      “Lecture continued, then. Lilacs on a bush are better than orchids. And dandelions are better! Why? Because they bend you over and turn you away from all the people and the town for a little while and get you down where you remember you got a nose again. And when you’re all to yourself that way, you’re really yourself for a little while; you get to thinking things through, alone. Gardening is a very helpful excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man carrying a sack of manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder. As Samuel Spaulding, Esquire, once said, ‘Dig in the earth, look into the soul.’ Spin those mower blades, Bill, and walk in the spray of the Fountain of Youth. End of lecture.”