“When I used to go to camp, we sang about the teeny-weeny ’pider who went up the water ’pout,” said Mrs. Quimby.

The teeny-weeny ’pider song was a favorite of Ramona’s too, but it was not so satisfying as “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer,” which was a much louder song.

“I wonder what the neighbors think,” said Mrs. Quimby. “Wouldn’t some other song do?”

“No,” said Ramona. Only a noisy song would do.

“By the way, Ramona,” said Mr. Quimby. “Did you straighten your room today?”

Ramona was not much interested in the question. “Sort of,” she answered truthfully, because she had shoved a lot of old school artwork and several pairs of dirty socks under the bed.

The next afternoon after school was even better, because Ramona and Howie had mastered walking on the tin-can stilts without falling off. “Sixty-one bottles of beer on the wall. Take one down and pass it around,” they sang, as they clanked around the block. Ramona grew hot and sweaty, and when rain began to fall, she enjoyed the cold drops against her flushed face. On and on they clanked, singing at the top of their voices. Ramona’s hair grew stringy, and Howie’s blond curls tightened in the rain. “Forty-one bottles of beer on the wall…” Clank, crash, clank. “Thirty-seven bottles of beer…” Clank, crash, clank. Ramona forgot about her father being out of a job, she forgot about how cross he had been since he gave up smoking, she forgot about her mother coming home tired from work and about Beezus being grouchy lately. She was filled with joy.

The early winter darkness had fallen and the streetlights had come on by the time Ramona and Howie had clanked and crashed and sung their way down to that last bottle of beer. Filled with a proud feeling that they had accomplished something big, they jumped off their stilts and ran home with their coffee cans banging and clashing behind them.

Ramona burst in through the back door, dropped her wet stilts with a crash on the linoleum, and announced hoarsely, “We did it! We sang all the way down to one bottle of beer!” She waited for her family to share her triumph.

Instead her father said, “Ramona, you know you are supposed to be home before dark. It was a good thing I could hear where you were, or I would have had to go out after you.”

Mrs. Quimby said, “Ramona, you’re sopping wet. Go change quickly before you catch cold.”

Beezus, who was often embarrassed by her little sister, said, “The neighbors will think we’re a bunch of beer guzzlers.”