Everyone Is Entitled To My Opinion- On Fall
by Paul Big Bear
Do you live in the portion of the United States that experiences changing seasons? Living in Pennsylvania we have Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, Wednesday we officially entered Autumn (Fall), with its own personality. What feelings does this season evoke for you? The days are shorter, the temperatures begin to drop, the days are warm the nights cooler, the leaves on the trees begin to change color as the lush green transforms into the more fiery reds, oranges, and yellows and begin falling. The various nuts begin to fall as the squirrels gather them, storing a food supply for the pending winter hibernation.
Summer flowers give way to the fall blooms, Mums. Pumpkin patches, squash, corn on the cob, and many more fruits on the trees that will fill bowls on the tables and be added to lunch boxes. What memories of your youth come to mind? Back to school and homework, catching fireflies, raking leaves, looking forward to Halloween donning a costume and going Trick or Treating door to door, remember mischief night, soaping windows, toilet papering houses, did you push over an outhouse, the end of Daylight Saving Time, Thanksgiving, and Hanukkah.
The new TV season of shows, football season, sweaters and jackets in the morning and usually left at school when the temperatures rose for the walk home in the afternoon. Did your father clean out the gutters and take down the window screens and put up the storm windows and did he enlist your help and instruct you in the proper way to clean the windows with newspaper and warm vinegar water? Maybe on a Sunday afternoon the family would climb into the station wagon and take a ride in the country (unless of course you lived there) so mom could get some fresh fruits and vegetables at good prices and, if all went well, dad would stop at an Ice cream parlor for ice cream cones before going home for hot dogs and baked beans for dinner.
How many memories do you have of fall and do you regale your children and grandchildren with them, sharing your precious memories of playing Red Rover Red Rover or hide and seek and jumping in the pile of leaves that your dad just raked so neatly for burning. Yes the joy of sharing our youthful memories with a baseball cap and two thumbs striking the keypad of their phone, oh what memories they will share with their children as they regale them with stories of playing Dungeons and Dragons with their best friend as his parents try explaining a dollar a car load at the Drive Inn theater`. I think I’ll pour a couple of ice teas and my wife and I will sit on the porch, watch the leaves change and fall, and throw peanuts to the squirrels. I may even sing “Memories.”