Autumn temperatures are here, and a promise of frost tonight. The season quickens the step and calms the mind. October has its running shoes and will soon be at the finish line. In the halcyon days of Eldorado, Earl would be placing coal in the old coal stove in the evenings. There would be some Little Debbie Cakes with pumpkin on the kitchen table. The papers would be there, including the National Enquirer. As Neva J often told me, Hillary is running the White House according to that old Enquirer.

These were the days when Neva J. wondered if Uncle Gene was warm enough in the shack he lived in. She would dispatch Earl to check on Fetch, as she called him, and report back on his health and well-being. Uncle Gene lived by his wits. He trimmed trees and painted houses, and when I was very young, he was a TV Repairman. I loved watching him work on our television and test the vacuum tubes on his professional tester. Mr. Willis made his living repairing TVs. Old televisions were easy to repair for many years, unless the picture tube stopped functioning. The picture tube was where you watched the nightly news, Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom, and Lassie. Picture Tubes were expensive.

There were no Nintendo Switch games. I recall thinking Atari was something out of the Jetsons Cartoon. Pinball machines were our entertainment. The player hit a little metal ball with one of two flippers, and it bumped different scoring bumpers. The goal was to not let the pinball go down the shoot of the gravity-fed game by furiously pressing the button on the side of the large machine to cause the flipper to be manic in their pursuit of smacking the ball. The player had to be careful to not tilt the machine or game over.

Halloween and October were times to attend the Orpheum Theatre for a scary movie. The Son of Frankenstein was playing, and it was a delight. He wore a merino sweater. He smoked cigars with the old blind man and uttered the famous words, ‘Smoke good.’ Halloween was the opening event of the Christmas Holidays. We flew over Thanksgiving, as Neva J had to have all the time available for Christmas. Thanksgiving was the Macy Day Parade. No turkey, no giblet gravy, no pumpkin pie.

As the weather turned from fall to winter, I wore my hat, and the bill snapped onto the hat. I unsnapped it when I did not want to look like a ’60s Geek. The hat also had ear flaps that were affixed to the hat by some snaps, unsnapped, and pulled down a strap under your chin, and snapped again. A popular hat in the 60s.

The War in Vietnam was raging. The death count was shown on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite each evening over dinner. President Johnson promised that with the next troop surge, we would be victorious. Fifty thousand Americans died. It was Halloween, and real life was a horror show while the Son of Frankenstein was good escapism.