The October Country......

My Uncle, my Mother's Brother, was the catalyst for the longest sustained love affair of my entire life.

It started with a Christmas present; he bequeathed to me several paperback books.

They sat on a shelf for several months, until my annual illness fell upon me, and I spent a week recovering in bed from....let's see....I believe that time, it was mononucleosis.  Wicked stuff, that.

So, because there was no cable television, and the afternoon television schedule was abysmal for a teenage boy, I cracked open the book.

And thus it began.

THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES by Ray Bradbury.

Oh, it was delightful.  Out, far beyond the tiny universe that was my sickbed, in fact the tiny world that was a teenage boys life, I flew.  Each new story in the series gave me chills, or laughter, or thoughts of a deeper nature than I had ever thought before.   But it was more than that....I could taste the air, and feel the red sand of Mars beneath my feet as I followed in the tracks of the first explorers, and the natives of the red planet.

That led to SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, and the crisp October air, and the sound of a calliope from that deceptively evil carnival run by Mr. Cooger and Mr. Dark  That Pandemonium Shadow Show.....

And for thirty seven years, I collected everything he wrote.  I dined on it, I feasted upon each story, each image....and when the banquet was over, I longed for more.

He told a story once, when the author was a young man, he attended a fortune teller who told him that he would live forever.  And he lived as if he was going to.

And in my heart of hearts, I hoped he always would.

Mr. Bradbury departed for the next chapter early this morning at the age of 91.  He leaves behind a large contingent of die-hard fans, and one man who still occasionally becomes that young boy in the sickbed, reading with new-found fascination at the wonders of worlds only dreamt of....

Godspeed, Ray.

Eternal thanks.