Joy of autumn in Eden and Harrison

Appleton weather surged -- oh how I despise that word -- into autumn overnight. The house was a chill 65 degrees. There must have been at least a little rain, with the streets and sidewalks showing slight signs of slickness in the morning. Grey skies have ket things cool and humid, but not at all unpleasant.

This weather, this season, brings about memories of football games played and watched, watched live or on television, of grape harvests, of school days, of pizza sales, of harvest moons, and of snuggling into bed. Fall is probably my favorite time of year. While autumn is a clear sign of the coming winter, it can first be a gentle reprieve, a respite from heat and humidity, from sweaty walks and lawn mows, from swarms of insects, and from the lethargy produced by heat indices in excess of one hundred degrees.

Harrison is not that much unlike Eden, especially in terms of lifestyle, climate and traffic. While there is "no there there" when one looks for Harrison proper, unlike Eden, Harrison home construction is booming, while Eden morphs into households of empty nesters, senior citizens and small families. Harrison only has Appleton and Green Bay, while Eden still has (what's left of) Buffalo. Harrison life does not include many urban habits; instead you see the campers, power boats, jet skis, Skidoos, and pontoon boats of a very outdoorsy lifestyle. Other than for the farmers, Eden never struck me as having a very strong outdoorsy element. It always seemed to be too cold, too wet, too windy, too snowbound, too gray or even too hot to create a life of leisure dedicated to the outdoors. Working outside was primarily for the farmers and their work crews. I saw very little construction while I lived in Eden from 1958 to 1969; the 'new' high school came late in my time living there, too late for me to graduate from the 'new' building.

In those teen years, Eden was both a refuge and a person. A refuge from the crime, pollution, bad schools, and 'traffic' in Lackawanna and Buffalo, yet also a prison with invisible but meaningful walls, with limits imposed primarily by how far you could walk or ride a bicycle. Two miles seemed light light years away. It was 1.1 miles from our house to the single traffic light in the center of town, where Main and Church streets crossed, and the climb up the hill from town was formidable. I felt much older the first time I was able to ride my 22" Schwinn up that hill without having to "walk" my bike.

I didn't know much better than what I had. Television and newspapers were still pretty local in their orientation. There was no 24x7 news cycle. Even the news from Buffalo was more likely to be about a traffic accident or a house fire than about a murder, a political scandal, or an international event. The national 'evening news' only about that time expanded from 15 to 30 minutes. With commercials, there is precious little time so precious little national news. And the news was often days old, given communications technology back then, before even fax machines. Cans of film mailed shipped from Vietnam, teletype machines clattering out the news, and little concern for most of the world outside Erie County.