Dandelion Wine Chapter 39 Summary

  • Grandma Spaulding's cooking up one of her epic dinners at the boarding house. She's half blind, and she never measures anything, and her kitchen's totally out of order, but she cooks like a beast.
  • The family and the boarders wolf it down, as usual; the same happens every day about this time. 
  • Doug's cruising around the joint with a renewed sense of purpose. He's alive, he got another chance, Mr. Jonas saves him, and all that good jazz. 
  • He's thinking big happy thoughts, one of which is that maybe the kitchen is the center of creation, the place the world began. 
  • He sees a jar marked RELISH, and thinks how happy he is that he decided to RELISH being alive. 
  • But there's a problem: Aunt Rose has come to visit from out of town, and she's horrified at how blind and disorganized Grandma is. 
  • Aunt Rose takes Grandma out, buys her a new pair of glasses, and gets her hair done. She also buys her a cookbook and organizes the kitchen. 
  • Sure enough, Grandma's cooking mojo disappears, and dinner that night is inedible. 
  • Grandpa Spaulding's totally not having it. He pulls Doug aside and tells him to get Aunt Rose out of the house the next day, so Doug takes her for a walk. 
  • While they're gone, Grandpa buys Aunt Rose a train ticket, packs her suitcase, and leaves them both on the porch. 
  • When they return, he tells her goodbye, meaning "get lost," but he's Grandpa Spaulding so he's nice about it. 
  • Grandma's out shopping when Aunt Rose leaves, and Doug decides he'll pay back the way Mr. Jonas brought him back to life by bringing the kitchen back to life. 
  • He starts flinging flour everywhere, puts everything out of order again, and finds Grandma's old glasses. 
  • Luckily, this is Bradbury, where lots of charming stuff happens, so Grandma's down with it, and she busts out an awesome dinner again. 
  • As he sits down to eat, Doug thinks, "Junkman… I passed it on."