It was a dark and stormy night....

The sun has dipped below the horizon and the sky is dark now, and it is easy to turn the clock back 50 years to 1954, when I was 5 years old, and Halloween had come.

It was a simpler time then. My mother made my costume, and a very unsophisticated costume it was, too. I was a black cat, and she had created the costume by dying some pajamas black and fashioning a hat to resemble cat’s ears. A black satin mask completed the look.

And in this photo, when I was a few years older,  I think maybe I was supposed to be a princess or perhaps a fairy godmother.  At that time, the elementary school I attended had a Halloween parade during the day and so we came to school in our costumes.

 

 

And again, this was a homemade costume.

Our father had an amazing Halloween costume. My sister and I can recall seeing a picture of him dressed up in it, but neither of us has the picture and we don’t know where it is. He had a rubber mask that looked very much like a Neanderthal, with exaggerated features, and scraggly hair. It was not too overdone, and thus is looked very realistic. He would put the mask on, and wrap himself in some old burlap sacks. And he would go with us trick-or-treating, lurching along next to us and growling and moaning at the other children on the street. They would be delightfully scared and would laugh and screech and they loved it. And he had so much fun doing it. Over the years he became the hit of costume parties that the adults had.  

Our Grandfather lived very nearby and we usually went to his house after we had finished trick-or-treating. On one memorable Halloween he tried to make us hot cocoa but accidently put salt in the cocoa instead of sugar.

In this part of the state, it seems inevitable that on October 31, Nature throws the switch for Winter, and the weather invariably reminds us of what is coming down the pike. The first few years that we moved here I found taking our boy out trick-or-treating was quite a far cry from the “brisk but not bad” nights we enjoyed on Halloween in southern California. It was almost always very cold and not much fun. Several years it poured rain, and we did not go, and finally he was old enough that we didn’t have to go anymore. Whew.

Tonight is no exception. Warm fall days earlier in the week have turned cold. The wind is whipping through the trees, leaves are blowing everywhere, which makes it seem even colder, and there will be a hard freeze tonight. We have never had a child come to our door for candy on Halloween, and I don’t expect there will be one tonight either.

A star is (almost) born...

Today is my birthday, and I suppose it would be appropriate for me to find a picture of me as an adorable infant (which of course I was), but instead, I offer you me on my third birthday, which was 62 years ago (if I’ve done my math right). This is the first birthday I remember.

We were at my aunt’s house, and I was given a small fishing pole that fit in a metal canister when it was taken apart. 

 Dad loved to fish...

 and I was happy to be able to go fishing with him with my own pole.

But what I actually want to write about is the family truck and what became of it. Sometime in 1948, a year before I was born, a pick-up truck rolled off the Ford assembly line, and about 15 years later my dad bought it and it rolled up in front our house.

Dad drove the truck to work every morning. On Saturday mornings in the summer, he used it to take us and our friends, including these two women who I went to high school with, to the beach. 

Which is why I expect they wanted a picture in front of it when they came to call on Dad shortly after Mom died.

When it came time for me to drive, I started learning to drive the truck, with Dad teaching me. Poor soul. My initial attempts at managing the gas and the clutch—mind you, this was in the large parking lot of a nearby warehouse—got him so nervous and riled up that that he had to stop and Mom had to take over teaching me in the family car.

Years passed, and because Dad was an auto mechanic, he kept the mechanical parts of the truck repaired and running, even though vehicles half its age had long since been retired to the junkyard or scrap heap. The interior of the cab was not in such good shape though.

Then, about 3 years ago, the family decided it was time for Dad to stop driving, and so he gave the truck to my younger brother.

He began to restore the truck and started taking it to car shows.

 In addition to winning prizes, the truck caught the eye of a man who supplies vintage vehicles for movies and TV programs.

One thing led to another, and last summer, my brother found himself on the set of Clint Eastwood’s movie, “Jersey Boys” as an extra in a street scene. 

He mostly spent the day driving forward, and then backing up and doing it again… and again…. and again…. We were all very excited that we might actually see him in the movie. Unfortunately, his scene ended up on the cutting room floor. But he and the truck may have another chance—he was also an extra on a film being made by Warren Beatty about Howard Hughes.

In the meantime, I am happy to be alive, and I don’t mind being 65. Wouldn’t mind having a few parts restored though, and I indeed expect there will be some new joints in my future.

Autumn

It was October again … a glorious October, all red and gold, 

with mellow mornings when the valleys were filled with delicate mists as if the spirit of autumn had poured them in for the sun to drain — amethyst, pearl, silver, rose, and smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy...

that the fields glistened like cloth of silver and there were such heaps of rustling leaves in the hollows of many-stemmed woods to run crisply through.”

L.M. Montgomery

Days of seemingly relentless rain falling from cold, gray skies have finally given way to clear, sunny skies, but not too hot – maybe mid-60s in the afternoon, a perfect day for heading off down the frontage road for the church loop and the large pond, a favorite place to walk.

When I take this route in the early mornings on these lovely Fall days, before the sun rises above the tree line, there is thick mist in the low area behind McDonald’s that sometimes flows out over the highway, and at the pond, the mist rises from the water.

All of that vanishes quickly as the sun creeps higher in the sky and warms the air, and I am reminded of the verse…  

You don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? It is a mist that appears for a little while. Then it disappears (James 4:14).

Yesterday afternoon the sun felt lovely and warm, warm enough to leave the light jacket at home. The recent rains had brought the level of the pond up high enough so that we could leave the asphalt and walk along the edge of the water without stepping in mud. A grasshopper fleeing from my approach leaped into the air and landed in the water. There are fish in the pond and I was curious to see if one would come up from the depths and eat it. While Molly was snorting into in the opening of some small animal’s burrow, trying to assess whether there was actually anything in there worth trying to dig out. I watched to see what was going to become of the grasshopper.

The grasshopper floated on the surface of the water for a few seconds, and then, much to my surprise, began to propel itself—not sure if I could call it “swimming”—toward the stubble that was sticking out of the water at the edge. I watched until it had climbed safely up on a stalk.

I expect there is a rather profound object lesson here for us: How often does life drop us into the deep end? Do we flounder around or immediately head for the shore? I guess we do the best we can not to drown. I dunno… but I can’t pursue it any further because the Wogster knows it is time for the afternoon stroll. Places to go and holes to snort into…

Modifications

Not too far from where I grew up in Gardena, on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, there used to be a landfill. Eventually it was indeed filled up and it was shut down. Then, the county purchased the land, rehabilitated it, and turned it into the South Coast Botanic Garden.

It has been a favorite place for our family to visit, and we have gone there on many of our trips to California. Several plants grow in the backyard of my father’s house that were purchased in the gift shop there as presents for my mother.

On one of our visits, the local fuchsia society was having a flower show, and many varieties of gorgeous fuchsias were on display.

 And among these beautiful flowers was a plant with rather small and not very flashy flowers compared with the others. The label said this was an example of the original fuchsia from which all the beautiful varieties had been created in the hundreds of years since the plant was first discovered.

Last weekend Richard met our neighbors as they were leaving on their way to a motocross event, and they mentioned that a couple of their hens had gone missing after a thunderstorm moved through with its sound and light show the night before. He said we would check to see if the hens had come home to roost.

So I did go several times to see if there were any chickens running around loose, but I didn’t notice any.

But I did notice clusters of wild grapes hanging into yard from a tree along the fence line.. Not the big fancy seedless kinds--grapes sometimes as big as a joint on your finger--that we can buy in the stores these days. No, these were the wild variety....

Grapes not much bigger than green pea, if even that big. Grapes that make a satisfying pop when pressed against the roof of your mouth and release a small burst of sweet but slightly sour juice, a small morsel of flesh, and two huge seeds.

Folks are upset about genetically modified plants that are increasingly working their way into our food supply in the United States, and rightly so, perhaps; but we humans have probably always tinkered with plants – like fuchsias and grapes – and the animals that we involve in our lives, selecting for the traits we want

From this….

to this…

 and this (and the little dog was no doubt feeling very frustrated because the big dog was in heat and he was sort of out of luck)…. and this...

 our precious Molly Wog ...


And from this momma cow to her baby, whose daddy was a very different sort of bull than the momma...

 and who watched me with interest as I sampled the grapes and is now enjoying life and kicking up his heels with the typical joy of a young animal, little knowing that he will likely end up as hamburger at someone’s dinner.

So, although I enjoyed eating the wild grapes, am very glad that I can reach in the freezer and grab a handful of frozen giant green grapes to enjoy in my morning yogurt.