Waiting for.....Autumn.... Fall.....Whatever

It's now been 275.31416 5/9 days since rain last fell in Sacramento. That's an exaggeration, of course, but our long, dry summer--except for a few drops of precipitation one August morning--is running its usual course. It's the kind of weather that makes it hard for TV weather folks to think of new and entertaining ways to avoid saying "more of the same."

Before I came to Sacramento I had lived in Houston and Chicago. Houston, besides having hot, muggy summers, gave residents another treat in the winter--the blue norther. I could stand on the flight line, which offered an uninterrupted view to the horizon, and watch a line of clouds colored in blues and black roll in from the north and feel the temperature drop. And that night my buddies and I would drive into town and stand outside a convenience mart drinking beer and people would walk by and ask, "Aren't you cold?"

"Cold? I'm from New Jersey (Connecticut, Boston, Chicago). This ain't cold."

Chicago weather was another story. In a city that offered mile after mile of fine beaches on Lake Michigan and plenty of municipal swimming pools, there were summer heat waves and summer days too cold to warrant a swim.

And then there was a day in February 1951 when the temperature in Chicago dropped to 15 degrees below zero. That day stuck so sharply in my memory that I felt it necessary to verify it with National Weather Service online records.

Did that really happen? Yes. it did. And that was the last winter I lived in Chicago. And to be clear, I left not because of the weather but because some nut in Korea started a war and I enlisted in the air force before I could be drafted.


American River Parkway, October 18, 2020
Fall colors beginning to show.

The air force moved me around, and I eventually arrived in Sacramento early in May 1957. Six months later the air force transferred me again; other moves followed. Ah, but the military works in strange and wondrous ways, and in 1966 I was back in Sacramento, and am still here more than a half century later.

It's a benign climate. For much of the year you can plan a picnic on Monday for Saturday and know that you're going to have good weather. It's hard to say that about a lot of other places.

But it's boring.

By this time every year, I'm ready for rain and clouds; gimme some gloom. I want to need a jacket when I go out. I want to hear geese honking when they fly over the house. A few appear on the parkway, but they could be permanent party who see no reason to migrate anywhere.

As for fall colors--next month.

I'm waiting.

***

Power Outage

Our electricity was off because of a scheduled power outage.  I used the time to run errands.  I needed essentials—beer, wine, and insulin syringes.  I like to be mellow when I shoot up.

Necessary stuff taken care of, it was time to do something pointless, time to go to the mall.  The mall in this case is Sacramento’s Arden Fair Mall, two levels containing 165 retail tenants.  The mall’s website says it’s more than 1,100,000 square feet big.  A million square feet! 

But a million square feet is small footage compared to malls in Asia that are three to four times that size.  Somebody has probably written a book about super-sized malls, but I wondered if anyone has compared any of the malls to classic structures such as India's Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramid of Giza, or the Roman Colosseum. If anyone has tried to elevate the shopping mall to timeless architectural status, I didn’t find a reference to it.  Moreover, some sort of record should survive so that people of the future will know that we are the era responsible for shopping malls, large dams, small electronics, and nuclear weapons.

Going to a mall is pointless for me because I don’t have the shopping gene.  Maybe I was born without it, or maybe it spun out of my system somewhere along the way.  I suppose a proper shopping gene could have been injected at some point, but it wasn’t, and I remain genetically unmodified, a non-GMO generic old man.

But I had time to kill until the power at home came back on, and my hunger gene pleaded for something to eat.  We, the hunger gene and I, went to the mall and into the food court.  Here is proof that there are no shortages of fat and sugar.  Rationalizing my choice on the knowledge that my blood sugar sags late in the morning and needs a pick-me-up, the kamikaze diabetic in me ordered a hot dog on a stick and a lemonade.  More than just a hot dog and a splinter, the whole creation is dipped in batter and deep-fat-fried so that it looks like what it is, a cocoon filled with carbs.

Then, something miraculous happened:  My phone rang!  In two years of owning a cell phone, this was only the second or third time I’d received a call on it.  That’s the result of deliberate use.  My wife and I got cell phones as backups for our intermittent land line, and we gave our cell numbers to very few people.

Actually, my phone didn’t ring but vibrated, which it was set to do.  I could feel it through the fabric of the pocket.  The vibration was quiet; no bystander would be distracted.  (All things that vibrate are not the same.  Just think of what kind of story you could write if you were in a crowded mall and saw a geezer with a vibrator.)  

Answering it would have to wait.  The food court was packed with noisy people, and I was enjoying a delicious repast of a hot dog on a stick and lemonade.

And, another miracle happened:  My phone vibrated—again!  A different caller this time. 

That was enough.  A trip to the mall and two phone calls was a good morning’s work.  I went home and lay down to experience my own personal power outage.

***