Comes Autumn

Comes the season of morning coolness, of long shadows in the afternoon. It is the time when Brace’s Orchards is selling their delicious apple cider at the the Farmers’ Market down on Public Square. Old magazine covers had drawings of football stadiums with students in raccoon coats, flasks in their pockets and pennants which usually said, “STATE” on them.

Norman Rockwell usually had a Saturday Evening Post cover which took us back to the days which never really existed, except in our imagination.

Today is the first day of autumn, and a cool one it is. In the apartment below me is a fellow from Rwanda and he’s freezing his @ off, while I’m walking around in a dress shirt. I guess it’s all where you’re from. I said, “Summer’s over,” and he replied, “I guess so.” But there’s still “God’s gift to Poland,” as they call it over there; “St. Martin’s Summer,” or “Old Wives’ Summer,” as is experienced in England. We call it “Indian Summer,” or “Second Summer” -- that last bit of nice weather before things get serious.

All the leaves who (I like to think of them as little living beings) sheltered us from the sun, cooled us through their output of oxygen and kept us less wet when it rained, are now dry and wrinkled –a foretaste of our future- and I’m afraid the kids have never learned how great it is to rake up a pile and then jump into it.

I remember scuffing my feet thru them as I walked.