Autumn is an interesting season in the Northland. Most often it is here overnight and gone in the blink of an eye when skim ice and snow flurries usher in the beginning of winter. Fall is usually short and makes a rebound perhaps for a few days in early November just to remind us what it’s like to just wear a flannel or for some of us who are braver a tee shirt for a few hours outside before we go under for the “great cover up.”
This year, we got a taste of autumn early and we received a splash of bright color on the horizon early and then summer came back as the temperatures rose up into the high seventies. We might cool down a bit now and the fish might go back to their usual patterns after the weekend, who knows? Who does know. That’s Ely, Minnesota for you. If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.
You still might not like it, but it will have changed. That’s one thing my Grandpa was certain of and in my experience he was right about that. That and the success rate of a Shannon Twin Spin lure. Good taste. Good design.
Since I wrote last week I've fin - ished and swim tested the frog fishing decoy and a folk art frog lure. I’m waiting for the late season top-water smallmouth bite to come back and go test that one again before I have to wait until next June. I’m going to work on a leather tail rat next. My hope is that autumn holds on into October and right up through Halloween.
I have really come to love vintage Halloween advertising, masks, cards and point of purchase art. Vintage Halloween book covers, magazine ads, stuff you would see in old Wool- worths, Ben Franklin and other five and dime stores from the early 1930s to 1950s has a great visual appeal to it without being gory or over the top. Stuff from my childhood in the 1970s and just before in the 1960s is pure nostalgia, especially those simple plastic masks that came with a terrible rubber band that always broke and a paper thin plastic smock “costume” that didn’t matter anyway cause I always had to wear a winter coat by the time it was trick-or-treat night.
I’m pretty sentimental. It doesn’t take much for me to get excited about what many people always refer to as “simpler times” even though they were often far more complicated or at least as complicated as the times we find ourselves living in today. It just takes an old Sears catalog or a stroll through the vintage candy shop in downtown Ely. A Green River soda. The smell of a fresh-baked cake donut with vanilla frosting and orange sprinkles like the ones my Mom hung from the ceiling from strings at my Halloween birthday party combo so we could have a “no hands” donut eating race. I lost a baby tooth bobbing for apples at that party.
I like fall. I’m okay with pumpkin spice, but I really love pumpkins and Jack-O-Lanterns and trick-or-treating and pumpkin pie I absolutely cannot have enough of. I’ve gotta wait until Thanksgiving for my sister to make my Grandma’s pumpkin pies though. It’s hard. I think I’d be okay with fall falling all the way right up until early December. Then it could start snowing. In the meantime we could
sit outside with flannels and perhaps a jacket, we could go fishing without bugs and we could enjoy the woods and wildlife without skis or snowshoes or boots or mittens or hats or parkas or long underwear.
We could spend more time getting used to a season of change. I like the shorter shoulder seasons. One of decline and slower pace and one of rebirth and overnight growth. Fall and spring. But, hey, I’ll go along with Grandpa Stouffer. I'll wait five minutes.
