THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 23, 1996 TAG: 9610230041
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: 64 lines
OCTOBER HAS SETTLED IN over Chesapeake Beach.
On weekends when it isn't raining a few of the locals can still be seen in beach chairs reading a book beside the bay, or sprawled on blankets listening to music or ball games on the radio.
Clouds with rounded shapes and pleated billows drift lazily above them like stuffed animals drifting across the bright blue sky.
And the Labrador and Chesapeake Bay retrievers are so invigorated by the cool weather they exhaust their owners who turn away from the bay, shaking their heads after tossing a ball or stick for the 100th time. Their dogs are still barking behind them, begging for just one more water-splashing fetch.
Winter has not yet snatched the leaves of trees from our neighborhood but the leaves are slowly turning as the October sun pierces the foliage with golden sword thrusts.
There are a few persimmon trees in our neighborhood so that if you crossed some back yards on a cool night when the wind is blowing in the right direction you can sniff the sweet, soft aroma of persimmon bread baking.
I read in the newspaper that a woman in Virginia Beach makes earrings from the caps on persimmons and sells them to folks. That would have pleased Pete Ivy.
Pete - until his death a few years ago - published a persimmon report that was well received in the mid-Atlantic states. He was news director for The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for many years but enjoyed his persimmon reports far more than the news ones.
And it showed. Pete wrote about a small Episcopal Church in eastern North Carolina whose rector was horrified to find - on a Sunday morning - that he had no wine for the communion service.
Pete said the minister decided to improvise and substituted a green persimmon beer for the wine. He reported that the congregation became so puckered up it had to whistle the doxology!
This is the time of year when most of us in a quandary - P.J. O'Rourke once described a ``quandary'' as the perfect name for a Korean subcompact car - over what to wear for early morning beach walks.
An old pair of shorts and a T-shirt seem about right most mornings, but then if a cloud passes over blocking the sunlight or the wind picks up over Chesapeake Bay you get goose bumps.
Mabel, my cocker spaniel, loves the October beach. She's buff-colored and her coat so closely matches the hue of a sandy beach in early morning that she seems to be a piece of it romping about.
She likes the bay best when it's so windy clumps of foam like meringue are blown onto the beach and her long ears flap crazily in the gusts.
These days we often hear a racket when we walk that scares Mabel out of her wits. A second span on the Chesapeake Bay bridge-tunnel is now under construction. And whumps of a pile driver pounding metal tubes into the sand can be heard for half a mile.
My cocker hates that noise - which from a distance sounds like a menacing giant huffing to clearits throat of victims which might have lodged there. Mabel believes several of the victims being disgorged are cocker spaniels.
She stops dead in her tracks when she hears it, opens her mouth in terrified astonishment, and heads straight for home.
The evening walks beside the bay are best. On moonless nights when the air is calm, the bridge-tunnel lights resemble a diamond necklace tossed across the still, black water. The retreating tides often leave pools of water on the beach which mirror the flaming red sunsets.
October. It's the best month of all around here. by CNB