Fall has arrived.

Autumn, harvest or fall, the season it is a changin’.

In the old days of the Up North of my childhood and early adult years, fall meant sweaters, warm wools, pullovers and jackets to curl ‘round the ears as we shivered from the dropping temperatures and kicked aside the brittle leaves drifting in piles at our feet.

In Texas, things are different — as they so often seem. In its ways, this is the Down South. Fall in my part of Texas is a gentle change, a perceptible, if only slightly but very welcome, drop from the soaring digits of summer. Fall’s entrance is a morning like this morning with a cool North wind lifting my ball cap on an early walk. The sun today will trace an even journey with the night, an equinox of equal day and night. The sun’s light will warm the rolling lands to only 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31 degrees Celsius), not the 95 F (35 C) the celestial globe touched for an hour yesterday. The time it is a changin’.

The day before yesterday, I drove the rolling lands of Tejas. If you were a “friend” to the Caddo Indians of East Texas, you were “Tejas.” The word is Native American, not Spanish. It was the greeting to a friend: I see you and I welcome you. Long before the Europeans arrived, there was Tejas.  After the diseases of the new ones decimated the tribes and left the hills empty and the valleys waiting, the land extended its welcome. Tejas became Texas.

I drove the long line of highway under the Texas sun and thought how this looked so like Texas – hot. It did. For all the greens of the surrounding prairies and the approaching trees on the East Texas horizon, it all just looked hot. Not bad hot. Not that. More friendly hot. I could feel the warmth and the welcome of the vistas and the views. I laughed. The land was so Texas. So, Tejas.

After the meeting in the far town, I drove back to the birthday party of my granddaughter. On the way, we passed a college football stadium surrounded by a sea of colored T-shirts. No sweaters or jackets here. I thought, “This is fall in Texas.”

I remembered Uncle Joe and the picture he’d sent of the last of the corn harvest:

 

 

 

 

 

In the Iowa of my Up North, the corn harvest would only be beginning, if yet, and the farmers would be hoping to capture the ears before the ice and snow froze the kernels in place until the melt of spring.

For Joe, the corn is complete, that harvest done.

Uncle Joe was saying he’d start picking the cotton next. You wear cotton in Iowa. You don’t see the white puffs dotting the distant fields, waiting for their autumnal harvest:

 

 

 

 

 

My mind reminded me: “This is fall in Texas.”

Uncle Joe also sent along this picture with a bow of color above evening greens, road-side arrows pointing the path around a bend:

 

 

 

 

 

In the fading light, it almost looked cool, but it didn’t look like fall.

Then, I remembered again, “This is fall in Texas.”

It is different down here.

 

Goodnight and Good Day — wherever you may be.

Enjoy the sunset and the day tomorrow — whatever your fall may bring.

 

 

 

 

 

Tejas,

Grandpa Jim