Falling for Fall (cribbing from Musette)

Reading Musette’s post from yesterday brought it home that Fall is really here. As a matter of fact we are well on the way to winter. So I thought “Tom, you haven’t bored readers rigid with your stories in, like, ten minutes!” So I am pushing the review I scheduled back a week and am ignoring the small pile (soon to get larger) of samples that I have yet to review and am inviting you taking you forcing you on a trip down memory lane.

My Hometown

Most of you know I grew up in New England. In an impossibly picturesque college town nestled in a valley with a bunch of other impossibly picturesque college towns. Of course we were convinced that ours was the most impossibly picturesque, and we were probably right. No that at the time I was growing up I appreciated it. Well perhaps once. I still remember driving one day, maybe to school, on a chilly fall morning in my little red roadster, top down, heater and radio blasting. I was going down the hill on Elm street towards town center, the red brick college buildings on either side of me, Mount Tom incarnadined with foliage in the background. For a moment I was able to feel how lucky I was to have this life and this experience.

The Sojourner Truth Memorial, erected in a small park in front of the house I grew up in.

Of course it didn’t last- what does? The car pooped out a fuel pump (which I fixed myself, thanks ever so) or I was late to class or the vending machine didn’t have flamin’ hot Cheetohs (since they hadn’t been invented yet) or any of the 12,000 daily annoyances that keep you from introspection popped up.

As they still do.

Our fall, and my old car. Carmelita Avenue

People say LA doesn’t have seasons, or if they admit we do they make some snarky remark about wildfires and floods. Or earthquakes and riots. We do have seasons. but like most things in LA they aren’t in your face. You need to seek them out. Fall won’t be on the Sunset Strip, fighting for attention among the increasingly Blade Runner-esque billboards. It will be on side streets, like Carmelita Avenue or Alden Drive in Beverly Hills, where the uniformly planted street trees will show color- but late. It’s in the days getting shorter and the evenings getting cool enough to make a jacket necessary to those of us who have been here long enough that temps that would send a Midwesterner to the beach in March make us bundle up and order the spiced latte. With oat milk.

Me visiting my natural enemy, snow. Berkshires in 2005

It was the Midwest that actually cemented my desire to move back to LA. I lived in Milwaukee for a few years and loved it. Beautiful town, not too expensive. lots of culture, friendly people (and a place that for once I felt short. All those strapping corn-fed boys. Yum.) What’s not to love?

The weather.

I went there first in early summer when it was perfection. So when my friend decided to transfer out of her pricey college and finish her education at UW Milwaukee, I thought “what they hey.” We eventually settled into a full floor in a small 1920’s house near the University on the East Side, with a fireplace, dark wood built-ins in the formal dining room, cute 1920’s bathroom, and a nice upstairs landlady who, for a fee, let us use her basement washer and dryer. No AC but we were 6 blocks from the lake. Who needed it?

Lakefront Milwaukee, with the snazzy Calatrava-designed Art Museum

We did.

Summers in the Midwest are just as hot and humid as they are in New England. Which is I assume as hot and humid as Miami. Or anyplace that isn’t hot and dry. Having grown up in New England I thought I knew what winter was. Uh, no. Mind you, being close to Lake Michigan is supposed to mitigate the cold winter temps in the same way it does the hot summer ones. A huge body of water that has tides large enough to sink ships and that cannot freeze will mean warmer temps, just as proximity to the Pacific keeps Santa Monica on a more even keel temp-wise than San Fernando.

“Warmer by the lake” does not however mean “warm.”

Fall in LA means clear skies after rain. From Lago Vista Drive, in my present car.

Like I wrote, I was a hearty Yankee who had lived for several years in new York City. I knew what winter was like, and I knew what it was like on foot. What I wasn’t prepared for was chirpy weather people saying that with the wind chill unprotected skin freezes in three seconds. And meaning it. So after my last winter, where I worked at a downtown restaurant that had no employee parking, and I would wait for the Downer Avenue bus thinking, knowing that despite 45 lbs of extra clothing if the damned thing didn’t come in the next 15 minutes I was going to freaking DIE, I took my savings and moved to the industrial triangle area of Beverly Hills. Where if the temps hit a low of 40F I feel there should be a telethon.

Elm Street, back in the day.

Musette mentioned turning to Daim Blond, and I need to unearth my bottle of that. I said in commenting that I thought it was discontinued but I’m wrong. It’s in the bell jars now and $330. Which I suppose isn’t eye-watering, but I remember buying it for $90 in the tombstone bottle.

I also remember $2 a gallon gas and VHS tapes. Things change. You can sample Daim Blond at Surrender to Chance.

Do you have fond memories of fall, or even winter? Share in the comments.

Images: My iPhone, Pexels, and Wikimedia Commons