Chapter 25 Summary

Tom relates how the year 1971 is a year of change for him and his family. Jennifer Lynn Wingo, their first daughter, is born. Lila becomes nursemaid and friend to the dying Isabel Newbury, and Grandpa has his glorious swan song. Quiet bands of surveyors show up in Colleton and begin measuring its bounds. No one thinks much of it at the time.

Grandpa Amos is a notoriously reckless driver, usually because he is talking to God and not keeping his mind on the road. His eyesight is also failing. When he nearly kills Mr. Fruit, the retarded man who directs traffic on the Street of Tides, the Sheriff takes his driver's license away from him and cuts it up into little pieces. To prove that he is not feeble, Amos declares he will water ski forty miles ending at the Colleton dock. He...