"The Magic White Suit" by Ray Bradbury (first published in the Saturday Evening Post, October 4, 1958; republished as "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" in Bradbury's collections The Day It Rained Forever [1959], A Medicine for Melancholy [1959], The Vintage Bradbury [1965], The Stories of Ray Bradbury [1980], Fahrenheit 451: Short Stories [1983), and Classic Stories 2 [1990]; republished in The Saturday Evening Post Stories 1958, edited anonymously and also titled in a slightly abbreviated version The Saturday Evening Post Stories Volume Five [both 1959]; reprinted as "The White Suit" in Argosy [UK], May 1959; it aired as a 1957 and a 1959 television play [scripted by Bradbury] reworked as a short play and published in Bradbury's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays, 1972; somewhere along the line it also became a stage musical [written by Bradbury]; it was also a 1998 American fantasy television movie directed by Stuart Gordon and scripted by Bradbury -- due a screw-up on the part of producer Roy E. Disney, it was released as a direct -to-video and not a theatrical film.)
Yesterday was National Banana Split Day so my daughters and UI went out and had -- you guessed it -- banana splits. That got me thinking about ice cream, which, in turn, got me thinking about this story.
Bradbury grew up poor and until his late teens he wore hand-me-downs from his father or his older brothers. While living in a Los Angeles tenement in this twenties, he would notice friends would borrow clothes to travel to Mexico and would, at time, pool their resources to buy clothes.
And that's the story. Five friends pool their money and buy a suit to share that none of them could afford on their own. How it affects them and what happens next help make this one of Bradbury's most powerful stories.
'Nuf said.
For the curious, the story can be found at the link below:
https://ia801405.us.archive.org/10/items/HeliganSecretsOfTheLostGardens/BradburyRay-TheWonderfulIceCreamSuit.pdf
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