Remember when ... a quarter was a decent allowance?
Schedule garlic planting for after the full moon. The mid-October high-pressure system usually puts an end to the warm days. The High Leaf Color Moon is full on the 13th and will intensify the cold (Countryside).
Oct. 10 is World Mental Health Day.
"We are especially conscious, during the lazy golden days of late October, of the insects making their last stand before hard frost and cold weather. Butterflies of many kind drift through the soft sunlight, visiting the flowers that have taken a new lease on life with the coming of cool nights. Yellowstriped garden spiders of unusual size spin their webs, which each morning are bespangled with dew drops. Caterpillars are active, eating their fill before taking to winter quarters, some hibernating under leaves and in brush piles, others spinning their cocoons to spend the cold months in the pupal state." (Leonard Hall)
It is fall, the days not yet hinting at the winter to come. The full moon floods the night sky, a harvest moon or a hunter's moon depending upon your job or your love. Geese are still flying, trying to make up their minds to go or to stay. When I was growing up, there was no decision, geese went north for the winter, I remember dad taking me out of bed, while mom spread a quilt behind the garage (back when I was young and we lived on Webster Street) and we spend a part of the night listening to the honking of migrating geese. It was too dark to see. Even as a kid, I knew they were flying north. I think that is what gave me a sense of wanderlust. Nothing like the sound of geese to give me a feeling of sadness and a longing to travel. October is a month of the closing of one season and the beginning of the next. I don't think any other month gives us that.
Apollo 13: Launched on April 11, 1970; by 1:13 p.m. Apollo 13 was already plagued by trouble. The spacecraft was supposed to land in the Fra Mauro area of the moon but an explosion on board forced the ship to circle the moon without landing. Before the mission started, backup lunar module pilot Charles Duke inadvertently exposed the crew to German measles. Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly had no immunity and so was replaced on the flight by backup command module pilot John Swigert. (NASA should have been more old wives tales and less scientific when it came to numbers).
In orbit, the crew finished a telecast showing how living in weightlessness worked when an oxygen tank blew up. After many emergency maneuvers, the crew safely returned to Earth. Orbit altitude, 118.99 miles; Earth orbits, 1.5; duration of flight, five days, 22 hours, 54 minutes, 41 seconds; distance traveled, 622,268 miles; landing was April 17, 1970 in the Pacific Ocean. Crew: James A. Lovell Jr., commander; Fred W. Haise Jr., lunar module pilot and John L. Swigert Jr., command module pilot.
Do you remember when: All the girls had ugly gym uniforms? Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school? Nobody owned a purebred dog? When a quarter was a decent allowance? You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny? (Still do, well maybe not into a muddy gutter, but on the ground, yes.)
Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces? You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked and gas pumped without asking, all for free, every time? And you didn't pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot? When they threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed ... and actually did? When a 57 Chevy was everyone's dream car? (Oh yes, wish I still had one) No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition and the doors were never locked.
Remember lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a ..."? Playing baseball without adults around? When stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger? When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited you at home? Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, The Lone Ranger, Roy and Dale?
Remember summers filled with bike rides, baseball, swimming and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar? Candy cigarettes, wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside, pop coming in glass bottles, and when milk was delivered?
Remember metal ice cube trays with levers (what is in my freezer), roller-skate keys, when baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle and a foot of snow was a dream come true?
The newest from the Born Loser: "I bought you the most popular new drink at the coffee shop, it's called a cold brew."
"How times have changed. Back in my day you had to go to a bar and show your I.D. to get a cold brew."
• Elizabeth Woodworth lives in Harrisburg.