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Fall Of Every Year: A Hallowe’en Tale
Fall of Every Year: A Hallowe’en Tale Russell came into the kitchen with his shuffling stomp, his heavy boots spilling crumbs of red clay from their deep tread. The linoleum-covered floor sagged beneath his bulk as he crossed to the table, beneath the dust-draped avocado-green ceiling fixture. The cone of 60-watt light it spilled onto the table was as feeble as his mother-in-law’s voice. Wont grits with yore aigs? she asked around a mouthful of blue smoke. He grunted in response to her bobcat voice and the cigarette dangling from her lips. Russell neither drank nor smoked, but he did allow himself a can of worm-dirt tobacco every couple of…
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Final Sunday of October
Jinx, once the solitary rambler who ranged over the acres surrounding our little farm, now rarely goes outside by himself. When Bluebelle wants out, he’s always up to accompany her, or when Mrs. Orr and/or I open the back door, Jinx is quick to push past us and run out, tail slashing and head on a swivel, looking to challenge all comers. But open the door and beckon him to come out while Bluebelle is sleeping or otherwise occupied, and he will offer a quizzical glance and walk away. Perhaps he finds meaning in his life to be attached to companionship. And so this morning I was puzzled but pleased…
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Warm Fades
Today was one of those October days that seemed ordered from a catalog, ticking off the options: electric blue sky…flaming riot of leaves falling and swirling in the wind….mild, warm breeze…long stretches of silence split only by birdsong. We ate brunch at a new place one town over, recently opened by a retired firefighter and his family. Just after they opened, one of their sons died tragically, and they had to close up for a while. Since they have reopened, we decided to give them a try today. It’s a little cafe’, clean and nicely decorated in a firehouse motif. Nothing fancy. We heard our waitress talking to a patron…
- Church Life, Daily Life, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Mrs. Orr, Photographs, Quotations, Reflections
Lanes And Patterns And Oh, Forward…
Most of us experience brief flashes in our lives during which we are aware of the singularity of a particular moment. This is special. This will never come again. I have never experienced this before. These flitting glitters of awareness have usually vanished before we can fully form a thought about them. The weather this week has been so astonishingly gorgeous….I have exhausted all the daylight hours staring like a lovestruck schoolboy out through the pollen-painted panes of the windows and doors. It has been special. And this particular weather pattern will never come again. I have never before experienced this exact pattern of light and leaf and life. For…
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Working Conversations About Grams
If this ain’t October weather, it’ll do ’til October gits here, as Tommy Lee Jones might say. Crispy, gusty, leaf-splayed, paintbrush-daubed, frost-threatening, owl-hooting, cloud-scuttling October. We went down to a nearby town yesterday and ate at a seafood restaurant we’d both heard good things about for years. The reports were more than accurate. We had a great waitress who, when not serving customers, was in constant motion cleaning and sprucing up the place. The restaurant was immaculate as a result. We each got a lunch special, very reasonably priced, and we figured the meals would be the usual slightly-reduced-in-size lunch entrees. Nossir. Mrs. Orr got popcorn shrimp, and I got…
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Halfway Done
October has swept in with its blazing flourish, its browning, crumbling, scything sweep, making the cheeks ruddy and the shoulders shiver, remembering the heavier garments that have hung ignored for months, the articles of garb we don’t want to use but for which we are grateful when we take them up again. And now, in the middle part of the tenth month, we are grateful. Our neighbor arrived Friday night with his loader and attacked the enormous pine tree that has reclined in his pasture since Palm Sunday since he hoisted it off our shared fence and dropped it on his side. Mrs. Orr and I reminisced about the day…
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Creatures Under Heaven (updated)
“To deal the tortures of hell to the animal creation is a way which too many people have of showing their belief in it….” from A Dog of Flanders by Ouida, 1872 This afternoon we did some needful grocery shopping, and on the way home Mrs. Orr asked me to swing into the drive-thru of our favorite local burger joint. She wanted to pick up a gallon of their tea, the best in the region. Idling behind a couple of other cars in the lane, I looked across at the back yard of a home a couple hundred yards away from the burger place. In the yard is a small…
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October Settles In
A week ago today, Mrs. Orr and I spent the afternoon on the back porch with a fan on, swatting yellowjackets and watering the flowers. Today? The promised cold front swept in night before last, and we are snuggled in the living room, wearing sweaters. We finally fired up the furnace this morning and it was pleasant to feel the chill melt out of the rooms. Putting the flannel sheets on the bed will be the final sob in our season of grieving the loss of warm weather. But…this is life, and we are grateful for it. Can one describe an October day without using the word “crisp?” The day…
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Mow No Mo
Late yesterday afternoon, I decided to do my final full mowing of the year, since the temperatures are slated to drop steadily throughout this week. This is typically the timeframe in which I drive the little yellow tractor out of the barn for the last time of the season. It was a most glorious day to ride the machine and cut the grass down. I did the front and back yards, along with the front meadow. My neighbor’s son always mows the south pasture because he rakes and bales the grass for hay. I chewed up the leaves with the blades and they will make good compost material; I’m determined…
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October, Enter Stage Right
The hummingbirds are gone for the year, I think. We saw a couple yesterday, and heard them as they were droning around in the trees, but that was earlier in the day. By early evening, they were not to be seen. This morning, no hum nor squeak greeted me when I opened the back door. We watched all morning for them but no hummingbirds. I took down all the feeders and replaced the nectar except in one, which was mostly being used by wasps, anyway. All the day long while we were outside, we strained our ears and eyes, but never heard nor saw any of the beautiful little paint…