{"id":666,"date":"2010-10-11T20:52:26","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T01:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thechristys.net\/?p=666"},"modified":"2010-10-12T17:20:11","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T22:20:11","slug":"fall-makes-me-a-better-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thechristys.net\/?p=666","title":{"rendered":"Fall Makes Me a Better Person"},"content":{"rendered":"

. . .\u00a0 which isn\u2019t that hard to do after summer.\u00a0 When we finally get a break from the heat and humidity, when you can open up the house and let \"\"<\/a>the breeze blow through, when going out into the full sun doesn\u2019t melt your hair, that\u2019s when I feel best.\u00a0 I smile more.\u00a0 I give the benefit of the doubt.\u00a0 Some might say it\u2019s because of where I live (in Houston) or used to live (in Florida) but that isn\u2019t true.\u00a0 I loved fall best as long as I can remember growing up in Pennsylvania.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fall means the best food, football, Halloween, festivals, Homecoming, relishing the time outside then appreciating the warmth inside.\u00a0 To me the trees look more impressive, the light is warmer, the wind changes from one of those guys with hair hanging in his eyes and sweater sleeves down past his thumbs to the Marlboro Man or the Brawny Paper Towel guy, good looking but rough around the edges and not someone to be discounted.<\/p>\n

The fall used to mean new TV shows, new clothes, going back to school and seeing all your friends and school\/office supplies (pens, mechanical pencils, markers, the works!).\u00a0 Although I don\u2019t watch TV shows and I haven\u2019t gotten a new mechanical pencil in years, Autumn is till a source of joy.\u00a0 And, I get things done in Autumn.\u00a0 I go out to get the paper in the morning and decide to refinish my deck or replace that tile or at least clean off my workbench.\u00a0 Spring cleaning doesn\u2019t hold a candle to a fall cleanout.\u00a0 If there are a few shirts or a belt that Linda has been trying to get me to get rid of \u2013 fall is when she makes her move because in fall I am a man of action.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite childhood memories was one fall, I was probably 13-14.\u00a0 My dad had taught me to play golf a few years earlier (which was no easy feat) and I had finally gotten to the point where we could play together like a couple of guys instead of the master and his noob.\u00a0 We belonged to a club, it was often crowded and schedules didn\u2019t always permit us to play together.\u00a0 But, on this fall day we didn\u2019t even see another group the whole round.\u00a0 The wind was blowing pretty good, the leaves on the trees had peaked in color and were beginning to blow off.\u00a0 We walked the course, we could have taken a cart but we both wanted to walk.\u00a0 It was just him and me.\u00a0 We talked the whole time, but I don\u2019t remember what about.\u00a0 There was the usual competitive banter, the stuff guys say to other guys that may sound a little cruel on the surface but clearly says \u201cwe are men and we are having fun together\u201d.\u00a0 Mostly we played golf together.<\/p>\n

By the time we were done, we were chilled to the bone, our faces were red with windburn.\u00a0 We showered in the locker room then went in the steam bath.\u00a0 The feeling was incredible the kind of thing that can still give me Goosebumps.\u00a0 It was so good we went back in the shower then back in the steam bath.\u00a0 Some other guys came and went through the locker room, a few were playing cards and smoking cigars.\u00a0 We were hanging out at the club together.\u00a0 One conversation I do remember; there was a guy who seemed to always be at the club, they called him \u201cPeanuts Gilbert\u201d, his last name was Gilbert.\u00a0 I asked dad why they called him Peanuts, . . . and he told me.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t usually have conversations like that.\u00a0 We had a good laugh, got dressed in our warm clean clothes, went to the bar and ordered a couple of sandwiches, ate them and drove home.\u00a0 I can\u2019t really do the memory justice, it is one of those things where you had to be there.\u00a0 Even then, I don\u2019t know if it left as big an impression on my dad as it did on me, I doubt that it did, but it is one of my fondest memories and is part of what fall means to me.<\/p>\n

\"MyrtleBeach00_309b\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The picture above was many years later, but it was another fabulous golfing adventure I had with my dad in Myrtle Beach and it was . . . . you guess it, in the fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. . . which isn\u2019t that hard to do after summer. When we finally get a break from the heat and humidity, when you can open up the house and let the breeze blow through, when going out into the full sun doesn\u2019t melt your hair, that\u2019s when I feel best. I smile more. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":669,"href":"http:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions\/669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thechristys.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}