I met him at BYU. He took a big swig of his drink on the way to a q and a, and said, "Pure gin. God, I love drinking in front of Mormons." That glint in his eye.
Tears came to my eyes this morning when I learned he had died. No author carries quite that combination of deep humanity and smart consideration of the implications of our technology.
He would come every night to a place I worked when they were doing a show based on his works, so occasionally I would just hang out with him; never talked "deep thoughts", just "stuff', and I'll never know why I didn't ask anything "deep"--I guess I didn't want to fawn, but I did finally go for it and got an awesome personal book inscription. A rarity in SoCal, Bradbury didn't drive, so sometimes I'd hang with his driver.
I'd believe his space stories over Kolob anytime...
My grandfather was a well-known painter in New England, and got to paint a couple of banners for the movie Something Wicked This Way Comes...but they weren't used in the final film. So, like most of my "celebrity" stories, they're second- or third-hand and not that exciting.)
Oh No, I didn't know. I'm from his hometown the one he called "greentown" in Dandelion Wine. The town (Waukegan) was very much as he described it I love the magic he put in the everyday activities of kids, it wsa like that for me until we moved to s suburb.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/06/2012 11:41AM by nomilk.
I read "Dandelion Wine" back when I was a young boy. It was one of the first books I ever read just for pleasure (i.e., not part of a lit class).
I can remember the two boys in the story agreeing that an old lady in their neighborhood had never been young. At the time, I thought that was a pretty stupid idea, since I knew everybody was once a baby. But over time, that story has taught me that events and people look different from different points of view.