LIKE AUTUMN IS TO LIFE

SEPTEMBER...

It sneaks up on you, though it got cold sometimes where I grew up. I remember one winter where it was it dipped into the 50’s almost every night. It would be hard to tell the seasons were changing by the turning of the leafs though; oak leafs simply fell to the ground revealing the twisted, ghostly limbs of branches which had already seen decades more time on earth than I might in a lifetime. Lime green eucalyptus leafs don’t offer a sign that summer has come to an end and autumn is upon you either. The cedars and evergreens, popular in landscaping along the coasts of California, are the tint of jade in October as they are in April.

Just outside Los Angeles, where at barely 800 feet above sea level in Simi Valley, the Santa Anas alerted me to Fall’s approach, but the hills were as brown then as May. Fire season meant the hills would burn the scrub off as the Santa Ana winds, up to fifty miles an hour, would whip through the dry valleys; but even that didn’t stop the Football game against Hart High School one October night in
1970...

The fans left to protect their homes as fire ringed the hills; fire so bright the new night lights in the stadium we had earned through selling chocolate bars could have been turned off; yet we played on. I never quite figured that one out. Of course the Hart High School team couldn’t return home over the Santa Susana Mountains on the new 118 Freeway because of the fire (later to be named for Ronald Reagan, our former Governor and actor who made “B” Westerns in these hills.) We couldn’t even get home after the game, so many roads were shut down. So we went to Chi Chi’s Pizza to eat and to watch the hills burn down, then each of us walked home through the smoke and fire-lit cinders whipping around us on LA Avenue. It was exciting to water down our roofs that night, play fire-fighter too, as September just closed its door.

That was a bad one. Usually one or two homes got it. In 1970 their were dozens burned down and even murderer Charlie Manson’s hideout just miles away, the Spann Movie Ranch, burned to the ground in the Fall of 1970. But life went on, and we barely noticed the oak trees regain their tiny hand-shaped leafs, or that the Eucalyptus dotting either side of LA Avenue had lost any of their tiny feather-like emerald ones. Leafs don’t change on evergreens.

I paid attention to February and May; those months as turning points in a year that alerted me to so much change coming. It meant tennis season and the fun-filled days at the beach, and summer jobs, and growing up, and dating pretty girls, and maybe playing another season of Football approached; and a boy needed to stay in shape for all that. Life was long as the days were too…

But September? It had no meaning other than another school year. And I had a long life ahead of me, and leafs falling weren’t a gage for such things, and colors were browns, except for those found in little suburban ranch home lawns and gardens of roses, gardenias, flowering ice plant, periwinkle, Japanese boxwood, and the ubiquitous juniper bush.

I recently visited Simi Valley, and stayed with Mark May on a hill that burned to the ground in 1970 while he and I played football. We reminisced. We looked out over the valley we grew up in and loved, and for a moment we hadn’t grown to be our father’s age…

You remember Mark May? The part-time 4th grade bully in MOM, The Woman Who Made Oatmeal Stick to My Ribs who would become one of my best friends? I uncovered the single home movie from my last football game, November 6th 1970 – We watched and laughed, and became boys again...impressed with out lithe running and skills which included getting clobbered only to get up and take it on the chin again, and again...

I got hurt, never put shoulder pads on again, but it was the game of my life. I played my heart out on a muddy field against a team boasting of another great friend, the team captain from Newbury Park High School, Mike Carlisle. We didn’t know he would have two "Falls" left to live back then… Or that our quarterback Phil, would see his last autumn season just one year ago.

Ah September. Where did it go? The quiet approach, hardly noticeable, then…

Another approaches. I live in the mountains now. It snows here. Leafs turn amber gold and the aspens quake among the evergreens. I became as old as some of the oak branches back home on the coast, and quake at the cold that is coming upon us as I realize the golden youth of so many Septembers is but a dream…


“Jim”
August 2008
www.jmpratt.com

Coming in 2010: WHEN THE LAST LEAF FALLS

JIM the BAG BOY for CONGRESS!

POLITICAL CULTURE UPDATE

AUGUST 2008 Congress on Vacation

Not much has changed in a year. The Democratically controlled Congress blames the Republicans for the energy mess and wants us to inflate our tires and ask for oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve to mitigate price at the pump...

The Republicans want to drill for oil at home, become energy independent in an age of terrorist sympathizers controlling the world oil supply...

There is alot of blame to go around but LEAVING WASHINGTON FOR A VACATION during a war and energy crisis? Sorry that is a "Majority" House and Senate decision. Nancy Pelosi actually turned the lights and power off last Friday during an energy debate.

Kind of like your Mom telling you, "Go to bed. I'm tired!" Well, what's a blogger to do? I decided that "common sense" is the answer, so I pulled up last July 19ths (2007) blog about a man with alot of it, and present it to you for your enjoyment!


JIM, the Mentally Challenged Grocer and Congress!

Sometimes it takes the mentally challenged to point out the truth and enlighten the lost. I was standing in the checkout line of my favorite “Mom and Pop” grocery store here in my hometown. I often go there just to support it over the larger “brand” supermarkets. At Day’s Market you get a clean environment, old-fashioned service, and fair prices. You also get Jim...

Jim was born with Downs Syndrome and is a man I would judge to be in his thirties. Jim is a bag-boy and general “go to” person for simple things needing done at the store. The owner, Steve Day, told me that a sitcom could be written around Jim alone. Jim has served faithfully for nearly two decades, and frankly the store just wouldn’t be as fun to go to without him.

So there I was today. I didn’t need anything really. I just wanted a dose of “Life at Days,” (the title for Steve’s sitcom idea.)A tall lanky boy with jet bleached-black hair, (intentionally “un-combed,”) a tight black T-Shirt with some death rock group symbol emblazoned upon the front, and tighter than tight black pants with the silver studded belt-buckle, bare footed (it’s July and 102 degrees today) came up behind me in the check-out counter. He had a “Sangria” (means “blood” in Spanish) drink, and I smiled (the new me) as he neared.

“Why don’t you go ahead,” I said. He was pleased, and once ahead of me I saw what no one wants to see. I wanted to scream, “And pull your pants up!” or ask the direct question I’ve always wanted to ask members of the color deficient teen cult, “How do you keep the pants up in front, but below the bottom of the bottom in the back?” This boy’s presentation of a non-muscular buttocks and immature physical development left me wondering about his mental stability. I knew that his intention was to attract attention, and also “fit in” – no matter how weird the societal element. I have a daughter suffering from insecurities, and so I really really work at holding my honest opinions in check and just “loving” the nearly unlovable...

So, I let the boy off the hook, desperately wanting to tell him that his pants would fall down at the lightest brushing up against a door, wall, person, whatever. If that happened he would no doubt fall on his face, require some medical treatment, feel more stupid than he looks, and get angrier at society. In short, the best option for his skinny, ugly derrière, was to pull his pants up near his waist and get on with life “safely” and without incident.

I didn’t have the courage to do so. Besides, I look like a Dad and therefore have no credibility. I walked out of the store, shaking my head, holding my tongue, wanting to act decent about the scrawny in-your-face- buttock-indecency strolling to his car just ahead of me. Here’s where justice, humanity, and honest voices join together for “the rest of the story.”Another Jim, one more bold than I, took control. See, Jim looks out for customers.

He was busy making sure the parking lot was clear of shopping carts and otherwise on patrol for customer needs. He was near the car (parents SUV) as this boy was attempting to lift his leg (hard to do when the pants are wrapped tight around your knees) into the driver’s seat. Jim saw the dilemma and loudly let the young customer know. It went like this:“HEY! HEY YOU!” (of course everyone in the parking lot turned) “YOUR PANTS ARE COMING OFF!” he shouted.

Now my self-loathing for not having courage to be fatherly turned to pure joy. This was a parent’s dream come true – the young man HAD TO listen to the mentally challenged person filled with pure light and truth. Besides, the teen probably grew up knowing Jim, when as an innocent pre-teen child-customer he came in the store with Mom -- and the teen no doubt liked him, as all Days customers do. No decent human (the real teen underneath the outlandish clothes) would brush off such a truly pure individual who, with child-like candor, was only trying to help. If only this boy’s parents and world decision makers were there to witness the exchange where simple truth met social belligerence head on.

The boy hurried (best he could) to get into the SUV driver's seat and take off. Jim, worried about the teen's struggle to get into the car, came over to the passenger side window and wrapped his fist on it. “HEY YOU! OPEN UP! I want to tell you something!”I cannot even describe the delight coursing through my skin. This was one more magic moment at Day’s I could have missed had I not shown courtesy to this culturally handicapped boy in the check-out line, now being challenged by the mentally handicapped man in the parking lot.“You should never walk around like that,” I heard Jim counsel. “You could fall down and hurt your face, and then I would have to pick you up and call an ambulance!” Jim counseled. The boy, who having rolled the window down, now nodded vigorously in agreement.

I last saw the boy in the rear-view mirror, still trying to get away from Jim as I pulled away from Day’s.Well, to make a long story short I felt that God had sent the correct Jim, the Day's employee with no sense of anything but right and wrong, to the rescue. Perhaps the lanky kid will listen and save himself some grief. Or perhaps he will go on to embarrass himself, and his poor parents as he continues to expose his sorry under-developed behind to the rest of us.But for a moment at least, justice and truth combined today. Jim, the slow thinking grocer, can teach us all a lesson.

As hard as honesty may be to accept, and even harder sometimes to announce to another, there is nothing quite like the simple and child-like truths to straighten out a culturally sensitive situation, like not tripping over pants hanging below the bottom of one's bottom. Now if the members of the US Congress could meet Jim.


"Jim" www.jmpratt.com.