The sun keeps trying to break through the clouds. When it does, the leaves seem to sparkle. It will be in the mid 60’s today, a fall day. This morning I noticed the front garden. One side is summer as a couple of flowers have bloomed while the other side is fall. Some of the leaves have turned red.

I have always loved this season. When I was a kid, we’d carve pumpkins. I remember pulling the pumpkin’s guts to clear out its insides and pretending to throw the mess at my brother. I was never a talented carver. From year to year, my pumpkins always looked the same with triangular eyes and a triangular nose and a mouth with a few teeth. I guess you’d have to call him the traditional pumpkin. We’d put a candle inside, put the pumpkin on the outside stairs and light it every night. I remember the inside top always blackened.

My mother bought cardboard decorations. We’d put them on the picture window. I remember a witch on her broom, pumpkins, black cats and a skeleton with movable arms and legs. The skeleton was too long for the window so it went on an inside door. When I’d get home from school, l’d always stand outside for a bit and check out the window.

This time of year the air has a different smell. The flowers are gone. The leaves have started falling and rotting on the ground. The nights are cold. The night air is crisp. It is clear without the haze of the sun. I can hear crickets. I can hear the dogs crunching through the leaves in the yard.

This is soup weather. Chicken noodle was always my favorite. I’d crunch the Saltines and put them in the bowl of soup. The broth would disappear, absorbed by the crackers. If I buttered the crackers, the soup had an oil slick of sorts.

Because the mornings were cold, we sort of bundled, a different bundling than in winter. I’d wear a sweater under a jacket. That was enough to keep me warm.

I have started wearing a flannel shirt and socks. It is time to put summer away.

Last night it poured, and the clouds are still hanging around though the sun did break through a couple of times. It will be warm, in the low 70’s. I will be cleaning. Later I will also go to the dump, and I need a few groceries.

My muse seems to have taken a vacation. I keep writing then I delete what I wrote. Coffee has been around for close to twenty years. It started on Blogger, got kicked off then moved here to WordPress. Some of my videos do get taken down, but there no threats of WordPress kicking me to the curb. I’m going to get more coffee, the liquid sort, and hope for inspiration.

When I was a kid, my father had a savage index finger. When he reprimanded any of us, he’d use it for emphasis by pointing at us and sometimes jabbing us in the chest. Walking backwards didn’t help. He just followed. We learned the response was just to nod and agree. My sister tells the story of one summer night. Both my sisters and our cousin, who stayed with us over the summer, sneaked out to swim in the pond near our house. They got caught. My sisters went up the stairs to their bedroom first with my cousin last. My father walked behind her and jabbed her on the back with that lethal finger all the way up the stairs while reprimanding them the whole while. My sisters laughed quietly. They had planned perfectly. They knew what my father would do.

When I was a kid, I’d eat what was served because my mother never cooked foods she knew we wouldn’t eat. Beans were on the cusp. The first weird food I ate was spaghetti with clam sauce. That was at my aunt’s house. She lived in East Boston right across from the tunnel entrance. Her apartment was over my uncle’s fish market. I remember thinking the spaghetti smelled weird, and it had no red sauce or gravy as my aunt called it. Her husband was Italian, my Uncle Lorrie, and that’s what his family called it. She urged me so I tried it. It was, to my surprise, tasty. From then on, I was willing to give strange foods a taste.

Let’s see. I have eaten eel, not so strange, octopus, also not so strange, goat, a bit bony, bush meat, a rodent I learned latter was grass cutter, snake, just weird, Guinea pig, good but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was eating someone’s pet, chocolate covered grasshoppers, eaten on a dare, and a variety of odd foods in Ghana. When I travel, I eat the food of the countries I am visiting. Many times I don’t ask questions. I just eat.