Getting cooler

The other day felt like the world caving in and I was sitting with a client who also was feeling like her world was caving in and then I suggested we look outside the window and see the early Autumn world in the sunshine at the end of the afternoon. And it didn't seem so bad for a second. The lights were off in my office and the sun was shooting through the window and there was just a touch of peace in the moment. A moment of clarity came and I could give my client some decent advice. After she left, I could sit in my chair and wheel around in a circle and take a deep breath and it wasn't so bad after all.

It is getting cooler at night. The breezes come and blow the clouds across the dark purpole sky. The stars peek out from behind the moving clouds. I can hear the limbs of the trees rattling against each other. The squirrels are chattering in the trees. I used not to dislike the squirrels as much as I do now. Dad used to say that he would put flea collars on the squirrels in their yard so that if things got bad, then they could eat the squirrels. Taking care of their needs until the hard times.

Here we are in hard times and I could just eat a few squirrels around here. Just to get rid of them mainly. Not because I have any real desire to eat squirrel meat.

Its sleepy time down South. Soon, I will take Tex out for the last time and then go to bed. To bed, I go.

Stained glass windows

I drove to Columbus this afternoon. I love driving to Columbus from Griffin. The road through Pike County and the eastern part of Meriwether and on through Harris into Muscogee is quite picturesque. I particularly enjoy driving along the spine of Pine Mountain from just north of Warm Springs to the country store at Callaway Gardens. The remainder of the journey down US 27 into Columbus can be gorgeous. Today, as I drove across Pine Mountain, I encountered the changing leaves of Fall beginning on the sweet gum and poplars among the pines. A lot of the leaves are falling and you could catch glimpses of the valley to the south. Later, I drove through Hamilton, which is one of the smaller county seats, but the old courthouse still shows some of its late Victorian charm.

It made me think of some of the memorable drives I have taken over the years. I thought about the first drive that I can still remember. When I was around five years old, before we had moved from Indianapolis to Huntsville, Alabama, my parents travelled with Frank and me west to Illinois, where we visited some friends. Somewhere along the trip we passed a fallow field, in early Spring, covered in an orderly fashion with rows of the tiny mint-green sprouts of the crops planted there rising from the loam. Alongside the road upon which we drove there was a row of tall, thin trees running along the road to the left and the sun was shining down on the fields ahead of us. I don't exactly know what it was, but there was a simple beauty about that scene that caught my eye. I don't know where it was other than somewhere in central Illinois. The scene just remains in my heart. Like bits of color in stained glass, it remains a part of my life.

Thinking of Fall

It was genuinely cool when I left the house a few moments ago and walked out onto the driveway to retrieve a magazine Cindy had left in my car earlier. An Autumn breeze had kicked up and I could feel the beginning of the new season before it is here. Later I will go back out into the evening with the dog on leash.

It feels like football season and I can feel the coming of the middle of the season when the leaves turn yellow, orange and scarlet, depending on their species. The grass will dry up and turn brown. I will pull out my tweed sports coats and my flannel and corduroy pants. Perhaps I can go to a football game in full Fall garb.

One Fall, when Molly, my Brittany, was very young, we drove up to the farm and let her run free and she took a walk completely around the boundaries of the pastures. Grandmommie and Dad were still alive. One morning, I put on my corduroys and a green tartan flannel shirt and went out onto the front porch and Cindy took my picture with Molly. Molly fit with Autumn, all orange and white with feathers. Quite a fancy dog for a Fall morning.

The first time I took Molly to the farm, we walked around the stables and Molly went on point near a bush. I slowly poked around the bush and a quail broke cover and flew away. I was pretty proud of my little bird dog.

Molly was a sweet dog. She never took offense. One time she ran behind a rose bush by mistake and cut her ear in half. She yelped and then came up to me to lick my hands. A couple years later I was bathing her and trying to cut some knots that had developed in her feathers. I accidently cut her flesh and she yelped, then licked my hands. I have never been loved as much by a dog. A real lover.

I love Autumn.

Duly noted

When I took the dog out for his last trip of the evening to the grass on the side of the driveway, I was disturbed by the dog's reticence to use a particular piece of the front yard, as he stopped and smelled and sniffed and acted as if there was something missing or present where he was smelling, I suppose, which prevented him from going any further, even though both of us knew there were duties here to undertake, for him, not me, no, it is true that we both had to take care of our duties, and it seemed as if we both would be unfulfilled, but he finally found an acceptable spot to seek relief and I was able to take leave of my momentary sense of frustration and notice that the moon was full and completely filling the dark night with a special light so that the skies above my head were a deep blue with a new type of illumination as if there were a second, more brilliant moon in the sky or a second source of light. The moment passed.

Back home we go

Today started about like any other day, around seven in the morning, and I would have sung in the choir if I hadn't misplaced my billfold as I left the house and ended up finding it too late to get to church. So, I changed clothes and Cindy and I went over the living room two or three times until we had almost filled the trash can outside with enough dog hair to reconstruct a small dog or two. Perhaps they will take it back to the hair back to the lab and create a junkyard dog for the workers. We moved everything two or three times to completely delouse the downstairs common areas.

As we completed this task, the brave Falcons were pounding the Arizona Cardinals to little pieces in the Georgia Dome. At some point during the day, we were going to travel up to Dunwoody to visit mom and Kate and do some shopping, but we spoke with Kate and she was planning on coming down to us, so we stayed in Griffin and cleaned the doghair from the surfaces of the living room and kitchen and entry hall.

Finally, about the time we had finished our hair removal, Kate arrived and we talked her into staying over night, since I had straightened her room enough to provide for sleep in a comfortable bed with clean sheets.

Which left us the opportunity to hop in Kate's car and travel down Maddox Road to El Toro Loco, where we sat outside in the late warmth of the passing Summer and drank iced tea and ate Mexican food until we were full and could take our leftovers back home and head back out to Wal-Mart to shop for life's necessities.

Afterward we bought ice cream from one of the local Dairy Queens and came home to sit with the dog and watch recorded television shows for Kate. I sat in my chair in the living room, next to my wife and my dog and my daughter, and it occurred to me how enjoyable it was to have our daughter back home with us, just quietly enjoying a night at home together.

Football Saturday

Today was spent mainly in cleaning the house. I cleaned the upstairs, getting at least two bedrooms ready for company in the future and making sure the bathroom looked presentable. I had to buy three banker's boxes so I could gather all the dvd boxes in Kate's room boxed up together and the books and cd cases in the study up. Now both rooms look pretty good right now and I wouldn't have a problem with having company up there.

Meanwhile, Cindy was dusting the living room and I ended up doing a lot of vacuuming and vacuuming and vacuuming and moving furniture around and vacuuming again. Now it is around 10:00 and Clemson and Auburn are in overtime and one of the running backs for Auburn just got his clock cleaned by a cornerback. That put Auburn in a 3rd and ten situation and they couldn't connect on the pass into the end zone and now they have settled for a field goal and now Clemson has the opportunity to score a touchdown and win this thing. I am not much of a fan of either of these schools but I do think Clemson is going to win and they just got a first down on the 13 to help make my point. They are now inside the ten, but have a big, fat lineman down on the field. This has been a war of attrition today.

Georgia and Arkansas (Dawgs and Hawgs)was tight in Athens today. Arkansas had the advantage most of the game, but Georgia caught them, with Arkansas taking the lead at the end, with Georgia throwing a pass into the end zone at the end and one of the receivers just missed catching the winning pass on a jump ball.

They have taken the lineman off on a golf cart. Third and five. They can make a first down. But no, they missed the touchdown on third down. Now kick a field goal and we go again. There was penalty, clicking Clemson back five yards and the field goal kicker missed it. Auburn wins. I have a good number of Auburn graduates for friends, very few Clemson graduates. I guess I will be glad for my friends. Until the end of the season, when the red and black will have to take the blue and orange out.

Well, no more football tonight. Cindy has allowed me all my football allotment for the day. We will be watching a movie until bedtime. Of course, I rarely care much about the west coast games anyway.

Franklin Street in Fall and Winter

Aunt Mamie's house was a townhouse on Franklin Street in Clarksville, four stories of red brick and limestone above the street level. You exited your automobile and ascended the steps to the small yard, then ascended a second set of steps to the front door. I turned around to look at the tobacco warehouses across the street and down in the low spot across the street. Clarksville smelled of tobacco curing and stored. There seemed to be tobacco warehouses on every street.

There is an eternal fog on Franklin Street in my memory. I don't know why. Perhaps it is because we always seemed to be visiting my great aunt around Thanksgiving. Perhaps it was the ubiquity of tobacco smoke. Everyone smoked in those days, or seemed to. My grandfather was a tobacco farmer. His neighbors were all tobacco farmers. His father was a tobacco farmer.

But I remember sitting as patiently as a young boy could in the front room with the adults, gazing at the nick nacks and pictures from faraway lands visited by my great aunt. Being offered a cold coke cola at the end of our visit. Thinking about walking down to Goode Wilsons to spend the dollar our grandmother gave us. Comic books and scale plastic models of Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolfman.

Goode Wilson's was later turned into law offices and my last visit was a job interview one December during law school, when visiting my grandmother before Christmas. There wasn't much of the old drug store left in the building other than the exterior. I didn't get the job, but it was pleasant to step out on the slushy sidewalk in my topcoat and hat and brave the winds of December in Northern Tennessee.

I drove down Franklin Street to the center of town and headed back east toward St. Bethlehem and the farm. The skies grew darker and the snow began to fall like a snow globe of an antique country scene in Winter.