Tales From Exit 22 by Al Batt

 

If you want to put your tongue on any outdoor metal surfaces, you’d better do it soon. Frost is lurking.

There is a blues song that says when the mind is on vacation, the mouth works overtime. That’s why I talk to myself when I can’t find something.

It’s not a huge problem for me, but everyone misplaces things. I try to be organized. A place for everything and everything in its place.

I like shirts that have pockets. One is good. Two is great. I need pockets — places to put stuff. Notebook, pen, business cards — everything but money. We carry the world in our pockets. We have become walking computers. Strolling communication centers. Meandering offices of information technology. We put technology in its place — a pocket.

My father favored bib overalls — an early version of cargo pants. Dad believed you could never have too many pockets and he was a smart guy even though he insisted on watching roller derby on TV. Pro wrestling on roller skates.

Like father, like son, except for the part about watching roller derby on TV. I own a man purse instead of bib overalls. It may be a glorified messenger bag or a diminished knapsack, but it’s another wrench in my toolbox.

My man purse provides familiar terrain. I strive to have things meticulously stowed in the right places. It gives me a sense of being organized. No one enjoys misplacing things. I recall a college chum who prayed to Saint Anthony (the Patron Saint for lost articles), “Tony, Tony, look around. Something’s lost and must be found.”

Fall is like my man purse, except everything in my man purse isn’t pumpkin-flavored. They both contain many things and I never know what I’m going to find.

Some seasons, not to mention any names other than summer and winter, tend to stay in the way. They’re like getting by a Winnebago on a winding gravel road. Summer spills into fall at one end and winter does the same at the other. Summer and winter have faulty brakes and aren’t always able to stop when they should. This can turn autumn into a screen test for winter. Too hot? Too cold? There will be days when fall will fix that. Fall clouds over and under. Cloudy and foggy.

I’m thrilled by nature’s color scheme. My favorite color might be autumn, although spring green is nice. I enjoy the fall leaf colors. When leaves are falling, autumn is calling. One leaf falls and invites 200,000 of its friends to join it. If money grew on trees, we’d be raking it in. Here is a little known fact. Most leaves are named Leif. Each autumn, I decide whether I should rake the leaves or move. My favorite leaves are those that blow into the neighbor’s yard. Chipmunks with cheeks stuffed with leaves for their nests look like Dizzy Gillespie. Someone wrote that you can’t see the wind. Fallen leaves move with the wind, proving that wrong.

The garden winds down. There are giant peanuts in it. Butternut squash. I pulled a carrot that resembled Richard Nixon. I harvested a tomato that mirrored me, only it was more intelligent looking.

Corn becomes all ears. Corn plants give farmers the best ears of their lives. I’ll ask a neighbor where a soybean field has bean all my life.

Mice enter the house to play hide-and-go-squeak. They need a crack as large as a squeak to get in. Fall is a time to skim ice off the dog’s outside water dish. When you need do that to the dish inside, it’s winter.

Many hands outside of baseball become gloved. I checked to make sure the zipper on my jacket works. I’ll put on a sweatshirt. I won’t remember to hang onto the cuffs of the long-sleeved shirt I’m wearing under it, so the sweatshirt will pull the cuffs up over my elbows. This will cause me to walk like a zombie face first into a spiderweb the size of a Buick, making me appear to be dancing a weird version of the Twist that would make Chubby Checker shudder in disgust.

This year’s lawn will be mowed for the last time. The mower is somewhere under all those leaves.

I love fall. I can trip and still have a nice fall. Every fall has a short story. I wish it were a novel. I hope Mother Nature falls asleep at the switch and lets fall exceed its allotted time.

Happy fall, y’all! Release the pumpkin spice!

Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Saturday.