Meeting a Legend

Meeting A Legend Meeting A Legend What does October remind you of? For me, October has hell.” Hearing a man of Bradbury’s stature utter a mild curse in always made me think of long shadows on the sidewalks and public made me giggle inside. I almost missed the part of his crunchy autumn leaves swirling through the air, just the kind of speech when he said that his memories of running barefoot images that one would find in some of my favorite stories like The through the summer grass and collecting flowers inspired him to Pedestrian, The Halloween Tree, or Fahrenheit 451. Listening to write his critically acclaimed book, Dandelion Wine because I was Ray Bradbury speak one mild Saturday in this month of fall fixated on his lips uttering the word hell. images strangely humanized the legend I had always placed upon Throughout his speech, Bradbury cursed some more, then a pedestal, making him lesser and greater of a man than I had ever smiled, shouted, gestured wildly and even looked me in the eye imagined. once or twice. Again, I thought of my grandfather; Bradbury felt Seated in a standard wheelchair, Bradbury immerged without so familiar, yet I searched the broad, lined face and expressive much pomp or fanfare. The audience of perhaps sixty people hands of this man who was a stranger to me. He mentioned clapped as a much younger man wheeled in the icon responsible everything that amazed me about him: his deep fascination for for igniting controversy in so many schools with his tales of book Mars which produced The Martian Chronicles; his interest in the burning and space travel. As he settled himself before the crowd, I Romans, Hitler, and Mussolini who burned books and his noticed right off how big he was, not fat, but big; it was as if he obsession to sit down for nine days straight “beating the hell out were an aged of his typewriter” to version of Apollo compose The who had escaped Fireman, what was Zeus’s wrathful later to become thunderbolt, but Fahrenheit 451; his had not escaped passion for the ravages that Shakespeare; and of time had inflicted his love for the upon him. He wore library. When asked thick black-framed about school, he eyeglasses and his replied, “I was face drooped more bored to death in heavily on the left school, but I fell in side than on the love with all of right, with his left those beautiful eye being reduced books.” The English almost to a slit in teacher in me clung between puffy lids. to his words and The skin on his soaked them up like face reminded me a thirsty sponge. of my As Bradbury’s grandfather’s, speech drew to a leathery and pink, close, my heart like all aging and began to ache, native knowing that the Californians. His man I had admired hair, Mrs. Mesdjian with Ray Bradbury at the Duarte Festival of Authors, Oct. 2007. so much would be completely going back to his gray, stuck up awkwardly on the right side as if he hadn’t bothered paper-strewn study and back to his dusty old books, leaving me to worry about his public appearance that day. And yet, as he with only his words and the memory of his aging face. Although began to speak in a gravelly voice, his eyes lit up and his hands big, even larger than life, there Bradbury was in his wheelchair gesticulated with each syllable as if they could not hold back the seated in front of me, speaking about his memories and his words that were waiting to explode onto the wind before those of adventures that weren’t too much different from my own. He us who were seated no more than an ordinary room’s distance almost whispered when he admitted that everyone he has ever away from him. loved and admired appears in his novels as characters and that all I sat forward in my chair as this old man delved into stories of of the comic book people like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, and his childhood, like the time when he was three and his grandfather all of the things that sparked his interest ended up being topics that had told him to go out into the backyard to pick as many he spun into short stories and novels. My mind raced, imagining dandelions as he could find. My eyes were riveted to Bradbury’s the characters I’ve known throughout my life. He made it sound deep-lined smile as he admitted that at the time, he didn’t realize so easy, but I know better than that. What Ray Bradbury has done that his grandfather would run the yellow flowers through a press is nothing short of monumental; I know that now because not only and bottle the liquid left behind to create dandelion wine. He have I read his words, but I’ve seen the very fire in his eyes. He jokingly admitted, “Dandelion wine tastes awful, but what the may be just a man, but he’s a master with words and a legend in my mind.