Every year I think about Montgomery’s wonderful character, Anne Shirley. With the exception of glorious December, other months are ho-hum by comparison. October represents far more than a twelfth of each of my years, regardless of what the calendar says. Even though one should seek out new experiences to savor, there is something comforting about the repetition of familiar things that you know you can count on.
I have read the comments of several authors who say that their characters become so alive in their minds that they actually dictate their writing. The rich Octobers in the deep pool of my inner being of my life have been chockablock with layers of experience and great beauty that in turn pull up snatches of poetry and writings by fine authors.
I cannot have too much poetry in my life. Poets see both the reality of the external world and the inner emotionality of t human soul with a keen eye that they express with an economy of the best words assembled in a memorable style.
Is there anything better than an Indiana October? Below are some lines extracted from a poem that the Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley, wrote. His lines are interspersed with some of my own musings. His memories predate my own, but his reactions are universal, and our spirits touch across the years.
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock . . .
O, it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best
With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock
October is a month of glorious sunrises that I watch from the window above the desk where I write. The rising of the sun is very important to the Japanese and to me. No two sunrises are alike. I shall never again see in my lifetime — or, indeed, in all eternity — what the sun, that master colorist, has provided on this day. Riley continues:
They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here . . .
the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin’ of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn . . .
O, it sets my hart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!
The vibrant colors of October comprise many of the threads woven on my loom of life: gold, pale yellow, tan, orange, brown, red, ochre, rust, the cobalt of the sky . . . Even the great Monet and other Impressionists could not surpass the palette of an October autumn.
Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps
Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps;
And your cider-makin’ ’s over, and your wimmern-folks is through
With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too!
I delighted in listening to old Granny spinning tales of how people lived. She described how they dug a trench and lined it with straw. Then they laid apples, cabbages and such on the straw, covered them with another layer of straw and dirt. Her brother, Bert, made homemade cider that Mother and her cousins were allowed to drink through a long wheat straw stuck through the foam. One time it had turned hard. Mother said, “We little girls had the bestest time!” wclarke@comcast.net

I woke up with a case of the literary doldrums. I even got out my file of quips and insightful sayings by people that I’ve saved for an emergency. I reread last week’s column before e-mailing it and thought, “I hope that people aren’t bored with this recitation of various games.”
Well, I never! — as old Granny used to say. I can’t predict what will ring people’s chimes. I received e-mails from people who piggybacked on my reminiscences. As I say so often, “I am you, and you are me.” Serendipity is when one unexpectedly comes across something happy. I’m certainly smart enough to take advantage of these serendipitous e-mails and let others do my writing today!
Mary Jo, the wife of one of Bill’s nephews, wrote:
Loved this column today.  I was such a game person from a very young age. So many happy memories come from those times gathered around a card table.  My sister, Ang, and I started playing Monopoly before we understood how the game ended.  Some games went on for three days and we kept our money in our billfolds at night!
I have always carried a deck of cards and we even played under our desks during 8th grade Spanish which is why I know about ten words! I remember my grandmother and her siblings playing Euchre on holidays and that was the only time I heard her swear.  They got so loud and would bang on the table and let out a string of curse words that sounded so happy and celebratory even though they lost that hand.  You could tell they had spent decades enjoying the competition with those they loved.  I could almost see your family playing canasta because although we are all different we can relate in so many ways.
What a hoot about Mary Jo and Angela keeping their Monopoly money in their wallets! Friend Jean wrote about a happy memory of how she, her Mom, daughter and father-in-law played a gambling game, Left-Right-Center, betting nickels rather than dollars. They laughed and shouted so much that her husband who was working in his office went downstairs to see what was going on. She still goes to a nursing home to play euchre with her deceased mother’s buddies.
My insightful nephew, John Jones, summed up the importance of games in people’s lives.
The games are all different but they have a common thread that binds them together, the players. Other than chess, which demands all your concentration, all of these games can be played while chatting and visiting with the other players. It is this sense of community while playing that brings everyone to the table. You can swap gossip, news, thoughts and humor while snacking or enjoying a beverage. In our fast paced and hectic lives we have need of these game times to recharge our souls and reaffirm our place with family and friends. You talked about the penny-ante poker, which I remember. It wasn’t the pennies that mattered…they were just to keep score. It was the people holding the cards, laughing, carrying on and having a grand time. It was the bonding of people over a game table.
John’s mother, Christine, and I played vicious games of Scrabble. “Rose Mary, I don’t think that’s a word.” “It is too!” “Get out the dictionary.” The Internet has added a new dimension to games. Friend Jana plays Scrabble on her pad with her sister who lives in Minnesota. Her husband plays bridge with various people from all over the world. He never knows who will turn up. Niece Lynn used to play Mafia Wars with an international group.
The new technology is wonderful. However, it is a second-hand, virtual reality where one cannot hear shouts of glee, cussing or moans of disappointment. One is essentially alone. I cannot imagine that it builds deep memories where one hears the voices of beloved people in the mind’s ear. wclarke@comcast.net

You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear . . .
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late
To hate all the people your relatives hate . . .
— “South Pacific” by Rodgers and Hammerstein appeared on Broadway in 1949. It was harshly criticized by some.

Wanda Frazier Smith passed away on August 23. I was six years old, and she was four when my family moved three doors away. Thus began a friendship that endured through all the years that we were together and apart. Retrospection shows me that Wanda and her family enriched and helped form the person that I became.
The last time I saw her was a couple of months ago when she and I went to Knightstown to attend the visitation for Judge Lynch after which she stopped at our house for dinner. Judge was the son-in-law of Gertrude Scovell who lived with her mother, Rosie, across the street from the house where I grew up. We spent many hours of our childhood, sitting on the glider with Rosie, and Wanda kept in close touch with the Lynches all of her life.
Bill and I attended her memorial service at the mortuary from which so many of my relatives were buried. Predictably, it was packed. Betty Lynch and her daughter, Karen, sat with Bill and me, along with my friend Darlene Keesling Petry. Wanda’s and my friend, Gigi, with whom we’d lost touch for many years was also there. These two events coming so close together set me to musing.
People spoke about how much Wanda loved Knightstown. Looking back to our childhood during the 1940’s and early 1950’s, Wanda and I said we were lucky to grow up in a small town where everyone knew each other. We were like the cartoon character, Mr. Magoo. We blindly wandered through our childhood without being concerned about our being of different races. Of course, prejudice and discrimination existed in Knightstown, but we weren’t touched by them. Children know what’s truly important. Left to themselves, they seek out friends, and Wanda and I were forever-friends.
We were together almost every day in every season, building snowmen, sledding, going to basketball games. . . donning our steel sidewalk skates in spring . . . playing kick-the-can and bicycle slips in summer, starting a Nancy Drew Mystery Club. When Wanda turned six I proudly escorted her to school. In autumn we built bonfires and roasted hot dogs.
We ate and slept at each other’s houses. We knew each other’s relatives. Wanda visited old Granny with me, and I met her mother’s parents. We thought that we broke her cousin’s arm when we knocked her out of the Fraziers’ plum tree. (Priscilla admitted before the memorial service that it was only sprained.) Mrs. Frazier drove two of my sisters to Henry Co. Hospital to have babies as all of their husbands were in service, and my parents had no car.
Our paths diverged: I went to college and became a teacher. Wanda married and had children before I did and rose to a very responsible job with U.S. Customs. My sister, Christine Jones, her husband and their eight children moved into my old house. Wanda’s sister, Barbara, and my niece, Dee, were best friends. The youngest Jones children, Ruth and James, played with Wanda’s older daughter Lisa.
Thus, did four families of neighbors come together and hold each other in deep and enduring affection. A great pleasure of my old age was that after losing track of each other, Wanda and I became reconnected and also later reconnected with Gigi.
And now? And now my forever-friend is gone, and I am left bereft for her and my lost childhood . . . wclarke@comcast.net