“First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren’t rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn’t begun yet. July, well, July’s really fine: there’s no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June’s best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September’s a billion years away.
“But you take October, now. School’s been on a month and you’re riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you’ll dump on old man Prickett’s porch, or the hairy-ape costume you’ll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month. And if it’s around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.”
— opening paragraphs from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
I love Bradbury….haven’t read any in a loooonnnggg time. been reading wedding photo books…..
thanks for the RB refresher!
My daughter was sort of with me when I met Ray Bradbury at an urban development even in Sacramento. She was “onboard”, I guess you could say. I had the opportunity to hand my hero a copy of my first novel, THE MERI, and tell him that it was because of him that I had become a writer. I reminded her of that just now when she Skyped from college distraught at the news of Ray’s passing. She’s an October baby, and Ray Bradbury made her month special and contributed to her love of books, reading, and writing stories of her own.
October is a rare month for girls, too. :)