How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Deep in winter they had looked for bits and pieces of summer and found it in furnace cellars or in bonfires on the edge of frozen skating ponds at night. Now, in summer, they went searching for some little bit, some piece of the forgotten winter. (29.19)
We appreciate things more when we have to search for them, remember them, and look forward to them. Dandelion wine, of course, is a piece of the forgotten summer preserved for winter. By searching for a piece of the winter in summer, Doug and his friends are searching for the past in the present. In a way, it's the same thing Colonel Freeleigh's doing when he goes time traveling.
Quote #5
The rocking chairs sounded like crickets, the crickets sounded like rocking chairs, and the moss-covered rain barrel by the dining-room window produced another generation of mosquitoes to provide a topic of conversation through the endless summers ahead. (7.12)
Here's one of many nods to ritual in Dandelion Wine. In this case, Doug's remembering how the adults have always talked about mosquitoes, and taking comfort in the fact that they have fodder for more nights on the porch saying the things they always say. In what other ways are rituals important to memory?
Quote #6
"Better than putting things in the attic you never use again. This way, you get to live the summer over for a minute or two here or there along the way through the winter, and when the bottles are empty the summers' gone for good and no regrets and no sentimental trash lying about for you to stumble over forty years from now. Clean, smokeless, efficient, that's dandelion wine." (40.24)
Do you agree with Grandfather Spaulding's assessment that it's better to create finite, useful mementos than the kind that hang around forever? Why might this be?