August slunk into the shadows the other morning, hissing, spitting and licking its wounds, as September’s loving embrace rose with a sunrise worthy of song.
As much as I despise the eighth month, the ninth, September is a joy. I find it appropriate that it takes nine months for that most wonderful of creations, a human child, to be born. September is the ninth month of the year, ergo the first of September is always a blessed event for me.
True, September can have its share of 100-degree days, humidity that chips at the very soul, and of course hurricanes, but September most often has at the very least the hints of cooling weather and comfortable nights. There might even be some evenings when it is cool enough to shock the less-industrious mosquitoes into staying home while a norther excites the blues and spots, and the clouds clear out to reveal a sky full of stars that were half-forgotten in the haze of summer.
September means dove season, and the camaraderie of family and friends on cornfields, pink-purple feathered rockets cutting through the setting sun, with the slightly slower ones ending up wrapped in bacon or covered in mushroom gravy. Whether or not the hunt is successful does not depend on filling the cooler or the game bag; the hunt is a success when a grandfather gets to teach another generation how to “shoot where they ain’t,” a new dog gets her first true trial, and memories are made on the tailgate of an old truck, with stories shared as the sun sets behind the pine trees.
September is not my time to hunt large game, since it’s still too hot to drag a hog out of the woods and I no longer bowhunt; for me it’s a time to watch as the yearlings slowly gain their independence as the bucks scratch the annoying itch of velvet from their hardening antlers. We eagerly watch our camera and the trails to see which of our residents made it through last season and survived the starving time of early spring, then the homicidal cars, disease, venomous snakes, and coyotes of summer. We have yet to see our matriarch, Big Mama, this summer, but I was glad to see Fireball make a brief appearance the other morning. We know it’s him because of the higher-than-normal white line on his flank just like the Plimsoll line on a ship, where he almost became piebald.
Fireball stood and stared at me for a good thirty seconds as I crept up the lane, somewhat surprised and disgusted that I had the temerity to interrupt his late breakfast at the food plot. It was almost September, so he ambled off rather than dashing away in fear.
September is when the blues, Spanish and spots get down to business, and the flounder decide they need to play catch up, regardless of ridiculous laws about when they can and cannot be caught. Back home in the brown water, the catfish and bass stir once again, and the pickerel slash their way through the tall grass near the bank as if they are there not just to eat but to destroy.
September often means church homecomings; few folks hold theirs outside anymore, since we have become an inside society, spoiled by air conditioning, but on a pretty day it’s inevitable that someone’s young’un will get fractious and need to go outside, so another one will want to go play with the fractious one, and traveling relatives will want to pay their respects at the cemetery.
Stories will be told of when the mama of the fractious young’un was that same age, and when ladies who are now resting in that burial ground competed to see whose banana pudding or fried chicken or prize casserole was devoured first. Ties will be loosened, sweaters and jackets discarded, and shoes forgotten by the fifth generation of children who run where their ancestors once trod.
Preachers will be remembered, fondly or otherwise, along with weddings, funerals, revivals, youth group trips and when lightning struck the steeple during prayer meeting and the church meetings where folks came together for a neighbor – or almost split over the color of the curtains in the vestibule.
Even though football started two weeks back, September means the return of the only kind I care about: high school, the kind where young gladiators with big dreams clash with their contemporaries under the Friday night lights. By the first or second game in September, the bugs have been worked out and the young guns have a professional pride in their work. Loyal, screaming fans fuel rivalries that have lasted and will last long past high school, bands play their hearts out and pretty girls do their best to keep the teams rallied for four quarters of battle and bragging rights.
September is time for me to check on my persimmons, to see if the worms will leave me a crop to defend from the coons, possums, coyotes, foxes and bears. I must find a new source for ugly apples and pears whose only aesthetic appeal comes when they are rendered into preserves, butter and cobblers, although their gastronomic qualities far outpace their bland, beauty pageant-perfect cousins in grocery stores.
September means I will not sweat or smell any worse than usual, and that I can once again eat in the manner I prefer without worrying about the dyspepsia that comes from too big of a meal on a hot summer’s day.
Some will say her weather is schizophrenic, but in September I don’t mind shedding a jacket in the morning, rolling up my sleeves at midday, and donning a comfortable sweater at night if she is too moody. She’s worth it.
Sweet September is an old, beloved friend; even with her occasional tropical tantrums and mosquitoes who know their time is limited, so they bite with as much desperation as ferocity. I have missed September like a heartsick Shakespearian suitor.
I long to see my hardwoods begin to turn colors, leaving the pines as the only green in the woods, while the squirrels curse the loss of privacy as they chatter triumphantly about the late acorns, hickories and grapes. While I will miss the oaks’ shade until next spring, the sun will be the kind that can be enjoyed, that sweet sun of September.
