Tales From Exit 22 by Al Batt

A hat blew by.

That meant there were head winds.

The equinox had arrived. Not the Chevrolet, the autumnal equinox. The word equinox comes from the Latin for “equal night.” The autumnal equinox occurs when the sun crosses the celestial equator, making night and day the same approximate length.

I love fall. I’ll never forget that fall day when one of Minnesota’s most famous governors asked me a crucial question. He said and I quote, “Could you tell me where the men’s room is?”

Then there was the fall that I attempted to leap over a bonfire and burned my britches behind me.

A man doesn’t forget moments like those. Fall is when we struggle to finish the projects that we’d planned to complete during the summer. I have a neighbor who restores furniture. He turns them back into trees.

Poets wax eloquent about rare days in June, but a fall day is every bit as welcome and lovely, even though some people blame fall for being a door unto winter. Some fall days are perfect like the best of apples, others wear like an ill-fitting suit. The bigger the summer, the harder the fall. It’s impossible to predict what the fall will be like.

I played fastpitch softball with Kenny Sibilrud. He was a great pitcher. One day, Kenny told me that I had a lively arm and a competitive spirit. He asked me to give pitching a shot. I tried. I never wanted to be a pitcher. I idolized some baseball players, but none of them were hurlers. I recall the first game I pitched. I was nervous. I walked the first batter on four pitches. As the next slugger stepped into the batter’s box, one of my teammates, an amiable loudmouth, kept chattering, “Make him be a hitter.”

I wanted to holler back, “No, you make him be a hitter!”

That’s why I could never be a meteorologist. I don’t want to be one. When someone asked me what the upcoming spring/winter/fall/summer would be like, I’d reply, “I don’t know. You tell me.”

There are new pictures of nature. Crisp days, the color of earwax, with lowered humidity. Great egrets rimming the edges of wetlands. Birds stopping at feeders and asking for food to go. Nuts loosening their grip on trees. Farm fields being tiled, a part of the Wetness Protection Program. Monarch butterflies moving on. Nights stealing time from days. Cold creeping into bones, reminding some folks of how much they hate winter.

We pack up summer. It’s the end of fresh tomatoes and sweet corn. Christmas sales begin. A day without sunshine is like November. Leaves wither and leave.

Are the leaves frightened by the wind or the prospect of winter? The changing amount of light sets off a chemical reaction in trees and causes leaves to change colors. Wind, a great natural exfoliant, is the chief method of leaf dispersal. A good fall is when I’ve finished raking leaves before beginning to shovel snow.

My neighbor Crandall leans on his snow shovel waiting for that first flake to fall. He didn’t spring ahead. That saves him a lot of time in the fall by not having to change his timepieces. The rest of us fall back so we can have an extra hour of cold and snow.

Fall is when winter auditions for a position. When memories are all that remain of summer, fall fires a winter warning shot. We hope for a Norwegian summer, a moniker for a mild winter.

Harvest hears farmers comment, “The wagon is half full. The wagon is half empty. We should have used a smaller wagon.”

Fall is the most uncommon of common things, but its weather keeps us guessing. Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt wrote, “It is the summer’s great last heat. It is the fall’s first chill: They meet.”

Ajax and Possum were building a shed for Annoying Steve. While eating lunch, Possum asked, “What is that?”

Ajax replied, “It’s a Thermos.”

Possum wondered, “What does it do?”

Ajax said, “It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold.”

Possum was so impressed, he went to Einar’s Hardware and bought one.

The next day, Possum brought the Thermos to work. Annoying Steve asked, “What is that thing?”

Possum answered, “It’s a Thermos.”

“What does it do?” questioned Annoying Steve.

Possum responded, “It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold.”

Annoying Steve inquired, “What do you have in the Thermos?”

“Lemonade and chili,” said Possum.

That’s fall in a Thermos bottle.

 

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.