AUTUMN
Remembering the way things used to be
by Jan Whitson

Even when I was a child, autumn was the best time of year, with its Indian summer days and cool, crisp nights. The skies seemed unreal: clear, blue and deep as forever. Fluffy white cirrus clouds floated high, reflecting light from a sun that warmed, but didn’t burn. Leaves changed color—green to brown, yellow-gold, bright pumpkin-orange and a red so rich I could almost feel it vibrate. Coats and jackets, smelling of mothballs, came out of attic chests where they’d been stored since spring. School projects changed as the leaves fell. We collected the most colorful, choosing those that were largest to arrange in vases, stems down. Smaller leaves were carefully ironed between large sheets of waxed paper to make placemats. We took these home and tucked them carefully away for a month or more to await Thanksgiving dinner.

Schoolyard games changed too. Autumn was the time for heated battles, boys against girls. The prickly sweet gum balls that littered the ground or black walnuts still encased in their heavy green fruit served as ammunition, and except for the occasional wild throw hitting face or legs, heavy coats absorbed most of the impact of the fray.

Outside of school, we roamed free, wool socks inside sturdy shoes, plaid flannel shirts tucked into our blue jeans. The crisp, leaf-scented air tickled noses and reddened cheeks. Nature littered the ground with colors that crackled underfoot. Wielding rakes longer than we were tall, we made huge piles of leaves and burrowed into the centers where the smell of dry leaves and moist soil mingled. Hidden and still, we heard the shifting sound of leaves settling, and the tiny noises of insects crawling magnified by the darkness and isolation. When parents judged the raking finished, the big piles were lit and burned in the yard. Smoke and the sweet, tangy scent of burning leaves filled the air.

In high school, the shorter days of autumn meant walking home below a darkening sky. Welcoming light streamed out the windows of houses, and each home looked like a painting by Thomas Kinkade. Doors opened to light and warmth, and the comforting smells of dinner cooking or cookies baking. Homecoming weekend came, busy with football and The Dance. Giant golden chrysanthemums, each blossom a corsage, sported football charms on top and massive maroon bows below. Sweaters of cashmere or soft virgin wool in heather colors paired with plaid Pendleton wool skirts.

On other weekends there were hay rides under clear cold skies lit by full, harvest moons. Not baled hay, but slippery, crunchy, resilient mounds of straw in wagons built to hold hay, not people and pulled by massive, patient draft horses, instead of tractors. We sang songs from our parents’ day—Shine on Harvest Moon, You Are My Sunshine, and Clementine. Laughing uproariously at ancient knock-knock jokes, some of us fell off the wagon and ran to catch up. Jumping back on required the help of friends who would pull you to safety, or failing that, tumble off themselves.

Then Hallowe’en would come. Yes, we still used the apostrophe back then. Every free moment of the grade school day for the entire month of October was devoted to drawing detailed pictures of haunted houses populated by skeletons, ghosts and black cats who hissed as witches rode brooms across the face of the moon. When we tired of haunted houses, we drew graveyards with tombstones carved to read R.I.P., I. M. Dead and U. R. Too. Instead of reading about Harry Potter’s Halloween feast, we walked with Ichabod Crane as the teacher read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

When the thirty-first finally arrived, we wore costumes made at home. One year, my brother and I wore paper sacks from the dry cleaner that our father had painted with white and pale green skeletons. Going from house to house were mobs of children, with nary an adult in sight: Hobos, Ghosts, Gypsies, Pirates, Witches, Princesses and Clowns. You had to have something to offer to get a treat—a joke to tell, a song to sing, a little dance—but the treats were great! Candy apples rolled in crushed nuts, popcorn balls gooey with caramel, rich sugary fudge, and homemade cookies. If someone had a party, we carved Jack o Lanterns, bobbed for apples, ate popcorn balls and drank apple cider from punch bowls smoking with dry ice. No one checked our candy, and with no lectures about nutrition or tooth decay, we ate until we could hold no more. Then home, under a black sky pierced with white-hot, quivering stars, kicking through drifts of leaves, and smelling the cold, the ripeness, the anticipation that was autumn.