This is my coming-of-age story – not for the protagonist, who remains bursting with youthful innocence at the end, but for me. I raised myself on a diet of genre fiction during my early teens, devouring detectives and aliens. Purchasing a second-hand copy of Dandelion Wine, expecting carny ringmasters and living tattoos, and discovering instead that a tale doesn’t require a mystery waiting to be solved. Something as gossamer as capturing ‘that summer feeling’ can enthral.
‘The Sound of Summer Running’ places us inside the imagination of Douglas, a world where magic realism is not a necessity, since in his head he can run like a fox or a rabbit — as a fox or rabbit, he becomes the wind. The point of the story is not how he solves his dilemma in yearning for new running shoes. It’s to awaken again that feeling of childhood freedom, where one’s imagination placed no limits on the world.
I was barely older than Douglas when I first read it. A few years back, I found myself the probable age of the store-keeper, living on a small roadless island in Hong Kong, carting the weekly shop from the mainland over hills. The next day, my feet always throbbing, I conceded deck shoes were inadequate, regardless of my fashion sensibilities. In the mall, gently rocking back and forth in my first ever pair of trainers, Douglas’s words returned like a warm summer breeze…”Royal Crown Cream-Sponge Para Litefoot Tennis Shoes: LIKE MENTHOL ON YOUR FEET!”
First published, as ‘Summer in the Air’, in the Saturday Evening Post, February 18 1956; incorporated into Dandelion Wine, Doubleday, 1957. Picked by Julian Baker. Julian writes the Consume and Enjoy Substack every week, and has done other stuff in the past.
A Personal Anthology 