Thinking about pulling out the flannel shirts is all I can do right now. It will be at least seven or eight weeks before it is cool enough to even think about wearing a flannel shirt, but I am dreaming of the cooler weather and the changing leaves.
A day or two ago the mercury in the thermometer was boiling up to near the century mark and with the humidity, it was an almost unbearable 105+ degrees. Today it is a hot and humid morning and my mind is wanting to take me to cooler fall days with leaves turning the warm colors of the season which bring with them a crispness in the air that lets you know that a fire will soon be in the fireplace and frost will soon cover the rooftops, lawns, and car tops. As I sit on my porch sweltering in the heat, I look ahead to the cooler days ahead and think of wearing my favorite red flannel shirt as I move about completing my morning chores.
I have for years remarked of that couple of cool days that often come in the middle of August. It is those days that give us a small taste of the autumn that is still six to eight weeks away in our part of the county. I have never known what that time is called so I researched it. I have been unable to find a name for this season. We have all heard of Indian Summer. Those are the days in mid to late autumn when we experience unseasonably warm, dry weather and we enjoy the last of our summer gardens before the first frost comes and changes the landscape, readying it for late fall and winter to come. Since there is no name for it. I think this time when autumn blows a kiss backward into summer should have its own name. Maybe, for now, I will just refer to it as Autumn’s Tease. Whatever it is called, I am ready for that brief respite from the heat that comes with those days.
My grandfather was a county farm agent in a much simpler time. He was born around 1885 and worked as a county agent until the 1950s. When I was a boy and after he retired, we would sit for hours and talk about the weather, the crops, the wildlife and many other things. He taught me Much about the seasons and life in those hours we spent sitting outdoors talking and sharing. Pop as we called him, told me of this time of year and those early days of autumn which tease us in the middle of summer. Pop was obviously not the only one who noticed these days. One of my favorite authors and a native Mississippian, William Faulkner summarized this time more eloquently than I am capable.
He said, “...in August in Mississippi there are a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality of light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and —-from Greece, from Olympus in it somewhere. It lasts just a day or two, then it’s gone...it reminded me of that time, of luminosity older than our Christian civilization.”
Men simply are not capable of writing words as beautiful as this today...I only wish I were. For now, I must content myself to sit in admiration of the writer of those words and dream of the days in the not too distant future when I can pull out my flannel shirts and enjoy the coming autumn.
Until next time...John.
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