THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 6, 1994 TAG: 9411040054
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
It being November in that other time and place, October was still residing in the little town. Like butter and syrup on a hot biscuit, the two months melted together and made a little season.
There was an amber-gold color in it, a taste of sugar and iron, and odors of apples and acorns. It was a Southern season - a dividend payable to all who had endured the summer.
The days shifted from warm to cool and back again. Oh, frost was coming and hard, cold days, but now the weather mostly was soft and easy, and the aster bloomed, and the last leaves trembled on the limb but held their place and color. For a while longer the black gum tree would display a palette of scarlet and purple, salmon and orange.
It being November, the coal truck labored from house to house, making backyard deliveries. Wes Cheney, the driver, invariably was out of sorts because the truck was, too.
There was a long upward slope from the depot, where the coal was loaded, to the general store where it was weighed, and between the two points there was a great deal of backfiring, stalling, cranking and cursing as Mr. Wes and his conveyance made their way.
There being less than 20 households, some of which burned only wood, the job always was finished in good time. When cold nights came, grates heaped with coal glowed cherry red and the town was plumed with smoke. But that would be in a later season.
In this season, there was a small remainder of cotton to be picked in fields that, here and there, came against or between the houses of the town. The harvest that had begun in sweat was ending in sweaters protecting pickers against the chill of breezes that sent dried leaves rustling down the rows. Their fingers were less supple and the stretched locks were harder to gather but now there was a laughter and singing in the fields; the urgency of the task was over, fear of a failed crop ended.
The gin no longer thundered throughout the day; the mules lolled; there was a vast quiet sifting downward from soft blue skies. Families from outlying farms had time to come to the town on Saturdays: They thronged in the crossing of two roads and talked away the shortened days; they bought staples and salt fish, and hurried to be home before the sun dropped quickly beyond the trees that rimmed their world.
As November lengthened, there was more rain and mist and smoke. Farmers had their wagons in the woods, sawing and hauling oak and pine and windfalls of any sort. They rid the saws of resin with kerosene sprinkled from bottles stoppered with pine needles. Those who had no metal wedges chiseled wooden ones with axes and drove them hard until fat logs gave off the staccato sounds of heartwood splitting.
High above the woodsmen, squirrels scolded and scampered from limb to limb in general defiance of the farm dogs which, accepting the odds against them, slept. They might have been out the night before, making a great show of glittering eyes and teeth for a 'possum that too late had climbed a tree too short.
By November's end, October had departed the town. The woods were gray, the leaves swept up. Cotton stalks blackened in once fleecy fields. Corn stalks crumpled from the top down. Frost had come to shrivel and scythe the weeds and grass. The season and the year were going to earth but the change had been slow, and we had come to chillier times through days of grace. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star. by CNB