Skip to main content

Fall

We are now a full week into autumn of 2008. With the world facing an apparent financial meltdown shortly, I thought it might be a good time to turn my back on reality and look down on the ground.

There, the five-year-old and I found a leaf on the way to school yesterday. It was bright pink, not a color I usually reference to autumn although it's as valid as any of the sundry others that fill the trees, streets and lawns. The veins were thin dark branches against a near fluorescent shade. He held the leaf all the way to school and then left it in his backpack until we got home. I found it again on the dinner table, crunched on one side but still radiating its beautiful death hue alone in our home. It won't be the last leaf he brings home this year.

***

Growing up in Winston-Salem, the ultimate autumnal drives were through Reynolda Gardens and down Runnymede Road. The Gardens, a usual weekend hang for the teens, had massive amounts of grass on the grounds, and the trees were concentrated along the edges like a Civil War battlefield looks. Lots of leaves all over the driveway.

Runnymede Road was and is the deal. Many's the rainy October afternoon we would glide home in our semi-legendary 1967 Olds Delmont 88 convertible (pale yellow, pale yellow interior and pale yellow top, what aficionados call the 'triple dip') down Runnymede, a split road connector between two of W-S's busiest streets that features several tiny parks and gardens along its midst. The leaves would have carpeted the road in yellow, brown and deep red and the rain shellacked it clear. The trees hung onto their leaves on Runnymede until they'd made a good show of it each year, then hung bony and barren the whole winter.

I would walk with my friends to our various schools. The damp cold smell of the leaves was especially strong in the morning, fresh to the nose, like the curing tobacco smell that permeates my hometown in late summer afternoons.

I drove down Runnymede Road the other day when I was visiting Winston-Salem. It runs past my high school and dumps out onto Hawthorne Road, past my junior high and elementary schools as well. Having been thinking about how R. J. Reynolds High School, while being designated an arts magnet school, is really more beholden to the physical education department's strong fundraising arm, I wanted to drive by and look for the new Sports Hall of Fame. It's not a physical building, apparently. So I drove on down, hoping to find the leaf cover of autumn ready for visual consumption.

A few weeks too early, I'm afraid. I go back for a book-signing on Sunday, so maybe I can drag the family along then, and see if we can enjoy the maximum fall has to offer on a sweet road of wonderful memories.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Peter,

Congratulations on your 100th post. I'm sorry to hear about the Hootie gig.

Not sure you'll remember me, but we knew each other Freshman year at UNC—including, among other things, astronomy class and Tequila Sunrises on the roof of Granville Towers!

I've got me a little blog, too. I was reminded of one of the books I reviewed there (http://wisdomofthewest.blogspot.com/2008/08/isnt-it-good-norwegian-wood.html while catching up reading your recent posts (which I discovered through your NYTimes gig—congrats): Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. I highly commend it to you. The last line, in particular, resonates:

"The wind still came icily down between the houses from the river, and my hand felt swollen and sore where the nails had pierced the skin when I clenched it so hard, but all the same everything felt fine at that moment; the suit was fine, and the town was fine to walk in, along the cobblestone street, and we do decide for ourselves when it will hurt."

We do, you know.

Good to see you're doing music and journo and being familial.

Best,
Jim H.
I am going to try to make the book signing.
I may not be able to stay long, the four year old
is, well, four. Will Mark Williams be there?
Jeff Hart said…
i'm with you peter. i so look forward to fall, especially the "first sweater day" of the season. i feel more alive in autumn than any other time.

Popular posts from this blog

Back in the saddle again -- new shows and updates from Peter H

  Outside The Hit Shed, Durham NC Hi everyone, Getting ready to start back up again, after a year-plus out of action onstage. I have five shows opening up for  Tommy Prine (son of John) coming soon:     August 6 - Georgia Theater (Athens GA)     August 7 - Cat's Cradle Back Room (Chapel Hill NC)     August 8 - The Grey Eagle (Asheville NC)     September 3 - 118 North (Philadelphia PA)     September 4 - Rams Head (Annapolis MD) I'm also going to open for the Connells , whose new album Steadman's Wake is superb:     September 18 - The Eastern (Atlanta GA) You all probably already know about Our Back Pages  (by Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey) being released on LP and CD via Omnivore Recordings, but if not, here's a link to the new video for "Today Could Be the Day." The songs on OBP are from the catalog of The dB's but given new and interesting treatments by Chris and me. I've been working in The Hit Shed, my home studio, over the months, writing a

Jungle gym

Day before yesterday, after school, I got to watch the five-year-old put hand after hand on the overhead ladder and get himself from one side to the other. It seemed like only days ago that he'd been struggling, worried about how to get from one rung to the next, how far down he would fall and how badly he'd be hurt if he did fall. Now he boldly traversed the ladder with me ten feet away, hearing "watch this, Daddy" and looking on, gapemouthed and amazed. I remember having that feeling about ten years ago, out at the lakefront park in New Orleans, watching my daughter struggling the same way for weeks of her trying and dropping to the sand, sadly defeated for all her effort. Until one day, she swung herself to the next rung, stayed attached then did it again with a look of intense exhiliration in her face. She was incredibly proud of her victory, as was I, and she has excelled at gymnastics and physical education ever since. There's one more child that I get to

"Back yet again!" says the Infrequent Blogger

(photo by Bill Reaves) I am inevitably confounded by the amount of time I let go by between posts here. My last post was February of last year (2022). You may ask yourself "what was he doing that prevented him from posting again?" and the answer is, of course, "nothing really." I forget I have this place to write my thoughts down for a waiting world to read, which would be helpful for me as well to empty my chaotic mind and make a little space. But since you're here and may be wondering what I'm up to, I'll try to fill you in. Mostly, I'm tending to home stuff. I do laundry and pick up groceries and a lot of domestic engineering that involves a broom, dustpan and mop. And sometimes that sweet shower glass cleaner recipe I found a while ago that makes it so you can see out again. We have a new junior at UNC-W and a new junior at Riverside High School, and they've been navigating their lives outside the nest. The high schooler just got her drivers&