But Enough About You: Essays by Christopher Buckley Read Free Book Online Page A

to need a lot of gypsum.
    — ForbesLife , April 2013

AUTUMN, INTIMATIONS
    Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, as Keats put it, before heading off to Rome to cough his life out in a pensione overlooking the Spanish Steps. According to my anthology, “To Autumn” is the most popular poem in the English language. And here I thought “Casey at the Bat” had that distinction. Well, I’m not a bit surprised: Everyone’s a sucker for fall. If you grew up in New England, as I did, this was when you knew you were in the Right Place.
    That apple smell, those burning leaves. Those younger than me—an ever-growing cohort—have no memory of setting a match to the piles of leaves our parents made us rake up. The Environment Police put an end to that, on the grounds that that rich, musky smoke would bring about another millennial winter. Such a distinctive smell, those smoldering leaves made. I’m reminded of it on bright sunny days when my ten-year-old sets fire to a leaf with his magnifying glass. It takes me back forty years. Rakes have been supplanted by blowers. The delicate scritch-scratch sound of tines combing the grass has been replaced with eardrum-straining turbines. Lawns now sound like the flight deck of aircraft carriers.
    Ripeness is all, as Lear would say, and fall is when ripeness happens. While I was growing up, Dr. Bell lived next door. He had a magnificent vegetable garden, and by September his tomatoes were red and heavy on the vines. We would sneak in after dark, armed with a purloined salt shaker, and sit and gorge. We ate his corn raw, each kernel exploding with sugar juice. My mother used to serve us acorn squash with puddles of butter and brown sugar. As a child, I found this a credible delivery system for a foodstuff named “squash.” Pumpkins made a hollow thunk when you tapped them. Gutting them was never my favorite part; the stringy innards clung tenaciously to the sides, so you had to shave them off. Back then most Halloween jack-o’-lanterns had quaintly similar eyes, noses, and mouths. Now I buy carving templates that transform your pumpkinto look like it was designed by the special effects crew of Halloween 5 . What hasn’t changed is the toasty smell of the candle-scorched insides, the thrilling pagan feel of the night.
    People from other parts of the country who came to New England in the fall said, “Aren’t the trees beautiful this time of year!” I shrugged. The trees were exactly what they were supposed to be this time of year. Nothing unusual in that. (Yankee snobisme .)
    We would drive up to New Haven for the Yale-Harvard game. This was my introduction to tribalism. Those blazing autumn sunny days and the blue and crimson banners snapping in the wind seem vivid now. During the final down of one close game, I remember my father telling me that it was sad, because this was the last time these players would be on a football field. Looking back, it seems to me apt that my first intimation of mortality was imparted to me by my father at the time of year when things start to die.
    Thanksgivings we drove up to Sharon, in northwestern Connecticut, my grandparents’ house. When we arrived, I would tumble out of the rattly diesel Mercedes and race into the house to make mischief with cousins. As there were fifty first cousins, the opportunities abounded. In later years when I was older, the ritual was to hunt pheasant on Thanksgiving morning. Not much fun for the pheasant, but walking through those fields, listening to the tinkle of the dogs’ collar bells, is one of my happiest memories. Of those Thanksgiving meals, I remember the pearled onions in cream, mince pies, and bottles from my grandfather’s celebrated wine cellar being brought up and decanted. Some of these had been maturing since the First World War. Sometimes after it was poured into glasses a half-inch of purple mud would settle at the bottom. My aunts and uncles would ooh and aah over these pourings, but we of the