JUST MAYBE IT'S ORANGE. WHO COULD KNOW?

Exactly why I love the season so. I used to think it was the weather. Pick any month almost any place, and that's the month of the best weather of the year.

I used to think it was because of excellent golf and baseball playoff times. High School, college, and pro football. Anything great outdoors.

Then I thought it was Halloween. I loved Halloween as a kid, before it started getting so commercialized. And gothic. And dark. And, well, yeah Satanic. Somewhat. It's almost become the anti-Christmas in some circles. So I hate that. But back then, it was a good scare. Drawing black cats and bats. Carving pumpkins. Trick-or-Treating and not having to have the goodies x-rayed.

Then I thought, the harvest. The corn shocks, the gourds, the Indian corn, and of course the big pumpkin orbs, the ones with speckles and moles and fungi. The albino ones. All sizes. The carvings and candles in them. Gosh, it was a fun season. I remember vividly the art classes at the high school were allowed to paint Halloween scenes on downtown store windows. Huge plate glass windows had their displays blocked by all things Halloween.

Bonfires. Leaf raking and jumping. Burning and the smell of crisp dry leaves. Not the burning of soaked leaves and branches of elm that smoldered and choked; even a good breeze couldn't blow away the stench. The elongated shadows that made you look ten feet tall. The blinding angle of the sun in early morn which came later. The blinding angle of the sun as it nadired into the nighttime.

But maybe it was just the color orange. Not my favorite, Regular Reader(s) know that's red, but it's a close second. Orange leaves, orange pumpkins, orange sun, orange flame. AAhh.