THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410200158
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Ford Reid
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
After consulting with my guru, a very specialized practioner, I have determined that today is Corduroy Day, the season's first opportunity to wear your beloved wide-wale trousers.
Bill Pike worked out the details for determining Corduroy Day many years ago. It is a complex formula involving mean high and low temperatures, wind patterns, number of hours and minutes of daylight and the position of the Bermuda High.
It is closely related to my wife's Stocking Day, the first morning in autumn when the temperature requires that she wear hose to warm her legs. She is not nearly as scientific as Pike is, but the result is about the same.
Really, the television weather people ought to tell us these things. Every morning and every evening they gab about ``heating degree days'' and ``cooling degree days,'' concepts that I have never fully grasped. There seem to always be several of one or the other and sometimes, I think, we have days with both. How can that be?
Anyway, they prattle on endlessly about those things, but not a word of warning that Corduroy Day or Stocking Day are coming up.
This summer, they came up with the sun index, useful, I suppose, to those of us who must avoid the harmful rays, although I can't imagine anyone planning his or her activities around it.
``I was going to a swim,'' someone might say, ``but the sun index was too high.''
I don't think so.
Then there are those two old favorites, wind chill factor and heat index.
What a concept!
As if people can't figure out that if it is 30 degrees and blowing 30 knots it feels colder than if it is 30 degrees and calm or that if it is 90 degrees and very humid it feels more miserable than if it is 90 degrees and dry.
But do they tell you about the truly important events of fall? No, they do not.
Like throwing out the first chili, which is not making a bowl of chili and then tossing it in the garbage.
It is akin to throwing out the first ball to begin the baseball season. The difference is that a president, or at least a senator, a mayor or some other very important person, does that for you.
You get to throw out the first chili yourself.
Unlike putting on the season's first pair of corduroys, which is best done alone and in the privacy of your own home, throwing out the first bowl of chili is most satisfying when performed with as many close, personal friends as you can muster.
Later, there will be many opportunities to sneak an extra bowl of chili while no one is looking, to sit in a darkened kitchen and gobble yourself into a chili stupor of the first order, to claim that you are not really hooked on the stuff but can stop eating it anytime you want.
Throwing out the first ought to be a social event.
In fact, I think I'll go throw out the first pot right now. Just as soon as I put on my corduroys. by CNB