Something Autumn This Way Comes

            “First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.  Not that all months aren’t rare.  But there be bad and good, as the pirates say.  Take September, a bad month: school begins.  Consider August, a good month: school hasn’t begun yet.  July, well, July’s really fine: there’s no chance in the world for school.  June, no doubting it, June’s best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September’s a billion years away.

            But you take October, now.  School’s been on a month and you’re riding easier in the reins, jogging along.  You got time to think of the garbage you’ll dump on old man Prickett’s porch, or the hairy-ape costume you’ll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month.  And if it’s around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bed sheets around corners.”

-Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury

            I know that’s a long quote.  I like it because it’s the very start of that book, one of my favorites, and I once used those two paragraphs, and a little bit more, to turn someone on to the Ray Bradbury.  I was in a used bookstore in Auburn, chatting with the owner, when the talk turned to Mr. Bradbury.  I mentioned that at the local branch of the library there were no Bradbury books when he said something like, “Never cared for him myself.”  I found a copy of the book in his stock and suggested he read the prolog, the above being well over half.  He read it, put the book down and said something else, this time along the lines of, “I didn’t know it was like this.”  You’re welcome.

            I also put that quote because I wanted to write about October and figured I could use Ray’s words for inspiration.  Here goes.

            With year-round schooling leaking into summer months and even “traditional” school starting in August now, June and August have lost their luster for boys, and of course girls.  So with June often filled with more school days, and zero holidays, and August suffering a similar fate, summer ain’t what it used to be.  Now July reigns supreme as the least school-y month, but July is tricky. Tricky and hot.  Always hot.  It’s not uncommon for triple-digits for every stinkin’ day of July in Fresno, and it’s a 31 day month followed by another 31’er.  The only such occurrence all year.  December and January don’t count; different years.  Here’s the tricky part: July has a holiday but unlike all those great Monday holidays, it can fall on a Saturday or Sunday making it null and void for children and adults alike.

            But while June and August have fallen from grace, and July makes up for no school with hot misery and a roulette wheel holiday, October has remained the rare and lovely month it was in Mr. Bradbury’s bucolic youth.

            October still has Halloween and the day it falls on makes no difference: dressing up and free candy don’t know a Sunday from Shinola.  October is the break out the soup recipes month, the wear a sweater month, the first fire in the fireplace month, the baseball playoffs and football just getting rolling month.  And October is that sweet spot of your utility bill where you’ve stopped running the air conditioner but haven’t cranked up the heater yet. 

            October is when the leaves turning and dropping really kicks into gear and even the brownish turn Fresno leaves take add certain elegance to gutters and a kind of grace to eddies and flutters of wind.  We’ve lost the smoky atmosphere of the burning leaves of our youth, but likely gained the clear view of the Sierras, where thunderheads pile up, blocked from invading Nevada.

            By the end of October a new baseball champion will be crowned, maybe in Boston, maybe in Oakland, maybe at the north end of Roberto Clemente Bridge.  Then we turn the page to November, where visions of turkey dance in our heads.