Paxety Pages

This year the thought of autumn fills me with some kind of longing. On the days now that it's cooler than 80 degrees in New York I walk with a spring in my step. I miss autumn, my favorite time of year, and the tenderest time in New York. The parks, never more beautiful than they have been the past few years, are at their most beautiful. The Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum hang big colorful sheets with the names of upcoming shows from their facades. They billow like sails. They move in the breeze. When the wind is high you can stand under them and hear them snap. All the outdoor vegetable and fruit stands have new bounty and color. All the kids are rushing to school in their very newest faded jeans and distressed cotton shirts.

We haven't had an autumn in New York in two years. We lost last September last year. It was the summer of '01, and then before the leaves could turn it was the trauma of '01, and we woke up six months later, in the spring. So all those tender leaves--they didn't register. I would walk along the streets and think of the old song from The Fantasticks: "Try to remember the kind of September when life was an ember about to billow." It was sad here as summer elided into winter.

But this year we will have autumn, and we will notice it. This is good.

Autumn begins today for me. It's still fiercely hot in northeast Florida, and it will be for months. But college football begins today, and with it begins a week by week march towards January 1. I think today that my longest association of memories is with the University of Georgia football team, and particularly with its broadcast crew. Unlike people who have a long relationship with a spouse, close family, or long, close friendships, I have none of those. My moving around has cut my close relationships, but every autumn for 36 years Larry Munson and the Georgia broadcast crew have filled my head with images: "...where a Bulldog all in mud picks him up and carries him back to the huddle," "...67 seconds....66...65...," "...Richard Applebee threw the ball as far as he could, and Gene Washington thinking of the Olympics in Montreal grabbed it and scored and crushed the Gator's hearts," ...."The sugar is falling from the sky," "...19 seconds...18...and Rex Robinson sticks it up there - yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah," "Hershel Walker, my God, he ran over two men," "We pulled out a hobnail boot and smashed their faces with it."

Tonight, Georgia hosts Clemson. What wars those teams had in the late '70s and early '80s. In many ways, Georgia won its 1980 national championship the day it beat Clemson. In many ways Clemson won the 1981 national championship the day it beat Georgia. And for most of the kids playing in tonight's game, those games were ancient history. They weren't born then.