CUCKOO CLOCKS, CALLIOPES, AND CROCK POTS

Early to rise as I am, I am designated coffee maker in the morning. The problem, our coffee pot beeps three or four times when the Joe is ready. It's been known to awaken my ear sensitive wife several feet from the kitchen. Guests, too, have been waken by its alarm. When it has seen better days, I'll retire it and seek another that does not sound the bell.

At my brother's house, there's a different bird that chirps away announcing every hour. That could never work in our house for either one of us who would wake up to the brownthroated weaver or other such aviarians. I much prefer the awakening call of the owl I heard outside our bedroom window about 5:15 today.

Calliopes, on the other hand, just put me in a good mood. It's hard to dislike music that reminds me of a circus. I guess if played over and over Small World After All-like, it could get to me. And, by the way, who plays a calliope. I never met a calliope player. Maybe like the encyclopedia salesman I wrote about a week or so ago, they don't exist. Or maybe you just flip a switch and calliope sounds come out. Calliope is almost as fun to type as it is to say.

Crock pots cooking all day long. Soup on the wood burner or kitchen stove simmering away. Logs on the fire. For me socks on my feet. These are the Autumn thoughts for me. Seeing your breath, just a little. No thick fog that can come back at you in the form of ice. Frost on the moustache. Oh yeah, I don't have one anymore. Oh well.

But today in the AZ clime it's supposed to be 94 degrees with bright shiny sun. No crock, no soup, no fire, and socks for golf only. That's Autumn where I live sans cuckoo, sans calliope, sans frost.