My One Hundred Adventures Read Online Free PDF Page B

mother.
    We drive on silently.
    â€œI’ve never been in these parts,” says Nellie after a while, breaking the comforting silence of the bubble that is our car moving through the stillness of the country afternoon.
    We round a bend. I gasp. The field ahead of us looks like something out of a storybook. Giant balloons, all different, all in birthday-party colors. It is like being in someone’s imagination.
    â€œCan you see them too?” I ask, thinking maybe it is
my
imagination they are in. “Those things in the field?”
    â€œOf course I can. They’re right ding-dong there,” says Nellie, who is beginning to look hot and cranky, pulling the car over to the side of the road with a thunk. “A bunch of hot-air balloons. You know what hot-air balloons are, don’t you?”
    â€œHot-air balloons?” I say, breathing dizzily. Why has no one ever told me?
    â€œWell, I expect you live in ignorance a fair amount of the time,” says Nellie, sighing. “I always say to your mother that it’s wrong cloistering you children like that down at the end of the beach where you’re so sheltered from the world.”
    I think this is a strange way to look at it. As if, if we’d moved to town, the whole of mankind and its mysteries could
then
make its way to us and we’d know about everything that is. My best friend, Ginny, lives in our town’s only new development. She has houses packed all around her and I know for sure she doesn’t know everything there is. I envision the world coming to us, full of its hot-air balloons and countries and peoples and cities, all piling up in a giant mess at our doorstep. We’d never sort it out and all kinds of things would get broken and lost.
    â€œSee those baskets under the balloons? People
ride
in those,” says Nellie.
    â€œDo you think
we
could ride in one?” I ask Nellie. I pray right at that moment to get a chance. If I can, then I will let the universe off the hook for the other ninety-seven adventures it owes me.
    â€œNo time,” says Nellie. “We’ve got important work ahead of us today.”
    She pauses a moment. “Those folks that are going up, though, they’ll be covering a lot of territory, I’ll be bound. Come on.”
    And then I see what she has in mind. She goes to the back of the station wagon and hauls out a box of Bibles, her knees nearly buckling under the weight. She bids me do the same and we trudge across the rutted field, getting bitten by bugs we are unable to swat.
    â€œNow, what have we here?” asks one of the balloonists as we approach, but a kindly-looking lady says, “Shhh,” and comes up to us. Nellie declares that she would like all the balloonists to take a few Bibles to distribute wherever their balloons take them, and that they can keep one for themselves to read on those long flights. One of the men starts laughing and the kindly woman puts her hand on his shoulder and tells him to go off and check some valves. Then she leads us over to a bright purple balloon, explaining that the balloons can’t take a lot of extra weight.
    â€œMaybe the two of you would like to get into the basket to see how it feels,” she offers.
    Nellie says she is too big and ungainly but that I’d probably like to. She frowns at me meaningfully. I can’t think why. She knows I’m dying to get into the basket.
    The kindly lady explains the workings of the balloon to me and tells me to be careful of the burner, it is hot. She shows me how the port line is used to maneuver the balloon as it lands and how the blast valve gets the balloon up and how you make the balloon go down again. I keep hoping she will offer to take me for a ride but she doesn’t. Never have I felt so much like a candle on a cake ready to be lit.
    Instead, someone calls to her that they need help and she leaves us.
    Nellie moves swiftly. She picks up a box of Bibles and