Autumn lies around a very small corner. It is early. I slept with the windows open so at 6:15 I hear the neighbor roll out his garbage bin. The heavy rubber wheels rumble steadily, picking up tiny pieces of stone and tar and the softest discarded grass clippings from yesterday’s mowing. I hear a voice on the street and then silence. I pad downstairs and in a few minutes, I set a mug of steaming coffee on the white ledge of the open living room window. It is chilly and I watch the drift of white, filmy air rolling off the top of the coffee and tumbling back into the room. At 6:30 I hear the faintest tolling of a church bell coming from somewhere through the trees and then a determined bird joining in; clucking in the front yard tree. He sits on a thin branch of this young tree but this is not a tree which produces fruit. I hope that the bird is not expecting anything grand this coming spring. I cling to the waning hours of August. The colder seasons are coming. Already, the sun doesn’t fall as strongly on the wall out front and the leaves of the tree turn slightly upward and curled in the breeze.
What we remember best is what we learned first. I remember riding in the car with my father; no seat belts, open windows, breathing in corn dust from the greening fields. Alone on Route 19, our destination is the old building on Main Street in Fillmore; I still feel the splintered wooden flooring under my bare feet. It is a simpler time. The ancient man managing the store and shuffling behind the counter quietly makes our treats; forever faceless. Dad orders a chocolate coke and I work on a root beer float. He sips carefully, favoring upper gums stitched recently by our town dentist. I wrap my bare legs around the steel stool pole. The store is silent. We are the only customers in there. The building is dying. Even I know this as a four year old because the wood smells so, so old. It splinters my bare feet as we leave the building, the floor cracking and sagging. We ride silently back to Houghton, full of sugar and I hold my right arm out the window, opening my palm against the air, fighting its force and letting my long hair whip wildly. My feet are filthy and I crawl over the hot seat into the back to hide as we come into town. I lie on the floor feeling small pieces of stone and tar grind into my knees. It is a simpler time.
690 Saint Paul 