Fall officially begins well into September, but for me, October truly feels like fall. The cool, crisp mornings and pleasantly warm afternoons are autumnal. In Kansas, the trees are showing more color by the day. A few leaves drift lazily to the ground. By the end of the month, homeowners will be raking those leaves into piles to leave lawns clean for the winter.
Way back when, people burned piles of leaves in the gutter. No more of that. But kids still like to jump into a big pile of raked leaves. We'd roll out with a few leaves clinging to jackets and pants but laughing, ready to jump in again. Simple things entertained us in my growing-up years.
You could write Family Stories about what life was like for you during your childhood in the month of October. Depending on what part of the country you lived in, your memories will be varied. Growing up in a Chicago suburb, I had little chance to see crops in the fields like corn or milo, or even pumpkins growing. I did enjoy seeing the trees change color and walking to school kicking at the leaves on the sidewalk. I liked smelling the smoky air on the weekends when dads burned piles of leaves.
I knew the season had changed when my mother put another blanket on each bed and got out jackets and warmer clothes for us to wear. And undershirts!
Even some of the food we ate changed. Instead of summer salads, soups began to appear, and a fragrant pot of chili might be simmering when we got home from school. Pumpkin pies showed up in October. Ginger cookies were a fall specialty and many things made from apples--applesauce, pies, cobblers, crisps, breads, even cookies. Oatmeal and cream of wheat appeared some days on our breakfast table.
I was a Brownie and Girl Scout for many years. Every fall our troop made a field trip to a nearby Forest Preserve. Once inside the dense thicket of trees and lanes, the sounds of the city evaporated. We took nature walks, learning to identify the leaves of various trees. A fire was built, and our lunch or supper was cooked in a kettle over the fire just like the pioneers of our country had done. Another lesson. My favorite thing to come from that big kettle was a dish called Bags of Gold. The name alone would be exciting to a child. What was it? Basically, tomato soup, probably Campbell's from a can, Dumplings made with a square of cheese in the middle were cooked in the soup. Other times we roasted hot dogs on a stick over the fire, charred and split, they were great. No Girl Scout fall outing went without making smores at the end of our meal. Roasted marshmallows on a stick, wedged between two graham crackers and a piece of chocolate. Gooey and scrumptious. I'm not especially fond of hot dogs, but when I eat one at a ball game, they taste wonderful, perhaps because of the memories they trigger of happy days with my scout friends ion the Forest Preserve.
At school, art projects revolved around the season and, of course, Halloween which ends the month of October. Bulletin boards were decorated with fall pictures and cut out leaves. There were Halloween parties and school and costume parades.
The farther into October we went, the cooler the weather. And yet, I also remember golden October afternoons when the sun ate up the morning chill and jackets were removed for a few precious hours. On the colder days, when my brothers and I played outside, we came in with our cheeks red and noses running but happy. That first whiff of whatever Mom was cooking or baking hit us the moment we walked in the back door.
In October, the radiators in our apartment started hissing and spreading heat through the rooms. Our heat was furnished by coal in big furnaces on two sides of the large complex. Watching the coal trucks deliver was yet another October activity. The big dump truck had a chute that sent the coal straight into the window of the garden level basement where it landed in big piles. Again, it was the simple things that entertained us in the 40s and 50s.
Write about your October memories and put the page in your Family Stories book. You might even find a story triggered by recording your memories in print. Talk about them? Yes. But write, too, so that future generations will know what life was like in your era.
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