- Doug, Tom, and Grandfather Spaulding are putting the bottle caps on the second batch of Dandelion Wine. Remember, they do three a year—one in June, one in July, and one in August. July's harvest comes to thirty-one ketchup bottles full.
- This family must eat a ton of ketchup.
- Doug looks at the bottle from the day in June he realized he was alive, and wonders why it isn't brighter than the others, and why the bottle from the day John Huff left isn't darker than all the others.
- He tries to console himself with the thought that if you put a drop of dandelion wine from July 4th under a microscope, you'd see fireworks shooting out of it. Not sure that science quite holds, but it's certainly poetic.
- So Doug says, "August up ahead. Sure. But the way things are going, there'll be no machines, no friends, and darn few dandelions for the last harvest."
- Grandfather Spaulding tells Doug he sounds like a funeral bell tolling. He feeds Doug a thimbleful of wine and tells him to run three times around the block and do five somersets (which is an old-timey way of saying somersaults), six pushups, and climb two trees.
- Doug takes off, but decides he's only going to do four pushups, two somersets, and climb one tree.