Every year about this time I dig out my dogeared copy of Dandelion Wine and open the windows and lie on the sofa long after midnight and read it. The weather is going from spring to summer here in Illinois and the smell of fresh cut grass and dew and the quiet sounds of the city sleeping just transports me back to my own childhood when I thought sneakers could be magic, and that ole Loveless was lurking in every dark alley. This book made me talk to my grandfather about his life and I learned that he once worked on the ships that moved coal though the great lakes, and later helped convert steam locomotives to diesel electric. And my grandmother told me that the house they lived in Sturgeon Bay was so cold that by the time she got dinner off the stove and onto the table in winter it near frozen. Also that the guy who invented a huge machine to get coal into the boats from the rail cars using the weight of the rail cars got a nickel a car.
I will miss Ray when he is gone, the two latest novels of his Death is a Lonely Business, and Let's All Kill Constance were fantastic. Makes me want to move back to So Cal. He is the master of short fiction. I don't think I have ever read anyone who does it better, his are so dense I can read them again and again and find something new in them. He bridged me into Science Fiction, I still enjoy short stories and subscribe to a number of pulp SF Magazines because I love the form (which attracted me to Escape Pod.) I am happy to hear each year Ray has not died and is still writing. It will be a sadder place for me when he does finally go. However, I still have Dandelion Wine and I will be found every summer in the family room long after midnight reading about the adventures of Doug and Tom Spaulding. I think if I ever were forced to become a book Dandelion Wine would be the one I would become.