Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

the icicle man were heard, the front door opened, Mrs. Bentley floated out with her hand deep down the gullet of her silver-mouthed purse, and for half an hour you could see them there on the porch, the children and the old lady putting coldness into warmness, eating chocolate icicles, laughing. At last they were good friends.
    â€œHow old are you, Mrs. Bentley?”
    â€œSeventy-two.”
    â€œHow old were you fifty years ago?”
    â€œSeventy-two.”
    â€œYou weren’t ever young, were you, and never wore ribbons or dresses like these?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHave you got a first name?”
    â€œMy name is Mrs. Bentley.”
    â€œAnd you’ve always lived in this one house?”
    â€œAlways.”
    â€œAnd never were pretty?”
    â€œNever.”
    â€œNever in a million trillion years?” The two girls would bend toward the old lady, and wait in the pressed silence of four o’clock on a summer afternoon.
    â€œNever,” said Mrs. Bentley, “in a million trillion years.”

Y ou got the nickel tablet ready, Doug?”
    â€œSure.” Doug licked his pencil good.
    â€œWhat you got in there so far?”
    â€œAll the ceremonies.”
    â€œJuly Fourth and all that, dandelion-wine making and junk like bringing out the porch swing, huh?”
    â€œSays here, I ate the first Eskimo Pie of the summer season June first, 1928.”
    â€œThat wasn’t summer, that was still spring.”
    â€œIt was a ‘first’ anyway, so I put it down. Bought those new tennis shoes June twenty-fifth. Went barefoot in the grass June twenty-sixth. Busy, busy, busy, heck! Well, what you got to report this time, Tom? A new first, a fancy ceremony of some sort to do with vacation like creek-crab catching or water-strider-spider grabbing?”
    â€œNobody ever grabbed a water-strider-spider in his life. You ever know anybody grabbed a water-strider-spider? Go ahead, think!”
    â€œI’m thinking.”
    â€œWell?”
    â€œYou’re right. Nobody ever did. Nobody ever will, I guess. They’re just too fast.”
    â€œIt’s not that they’re fast. They just don’t exist,” said Tom. He thought about it and nodded. “That’s right, they just never did exist at all. Well, what I got to report is this.”
    He leaned over and whispered in his brother’s ear.
    Douglas wrote it.
    They both looked at it.
    â€œI’ll be darned!” said Douglas. “I never thought of that. That’s brilliant! It’s true. Old people never were children!”
    â€œAnd it’s kind of sad,” said Tom, sitting still. “There’s nothing we can do to help them.”

S eems like the town is full of machines,” said Douglas, running. “Mr. Auffmann and his Happiness Machine, Miss Fern and Miss Roberta and their Green Machine. Now, Charlie, what you handing me?”
    â€œA Time Machine!” panted Charlie Woodman, pacing him. “Mother’s, scout’s, Injun’s honor!”
    â€œTravels in the past and future?” John Huff asked, easily circling them.
    â€œOnly in the past, but you can’t have everything. Here we are.”
    Charlie Woodman pulled up at a hedge.
    Douglas peered in at the old house. “Heck, that’s Colonel Freeleigh’s place. Can’t be no Time Machine in there. He’s no inventor, and if he was, we’d known about an important thing like a Time Machine years ago.”
    Charlie and John tiptoed up the front-porch steps. Douglas snorted and shook his head, staying at the bottom of the steps.
    â€œOkay, Douglas,” said Charlie. “Be a knucklehead. Sure, Colonel Freeleigh didn’t invent this Time Machine. But he’s got a proprietary interest in it, and it’s been here all the time. We were too darned dumb to notice! So long, Douglas Spaulding, to you!”
    Charlie took John’s elbow as though he was escorting a