Tuesday morning a hard frost greeted me as I walked out of my house on my way to the polling place at Houserville United Methodist Church—a reminder that Mother Earth herself had turned the page on summer. A snap in the air awakens the senses and also awakens the mind to reflections of times gone by.
In an interview about a week and a half ago I was asked about Penn State and State College. I responded by talking about the hold they have on me and so many others. Make no mistake: This town casts a spell on us, and the spell may be strongest in the fall.
Some of my strongest childhood memories are from autumn. Hay rides, pumpkin carving and Friday night football games at Memorial Field crowd my mind. As kids we went to the games but barely watched the action. Instead we ran around throwing a football in Central Parklet above the end zone of Memorial Field.
In the week since that interviewer asked me about this place, some current moments have rekindled memories of days past here in State College.
Last Thursday night was the big trick-or-treat night (Someone explain that one to me…please). Watching the excitement in my children’s eyes and hearing such joy in their voices, I relived the thrill of it all.
I remembered my days on the free candy circuit. The most notable costume was a CATA bus costume made from a refrigerator box that took two of us to carry. It offered no peripheral vision, so Brad Miller and I never saw the pranksters’ blindside hit coming. We ended up on the pavement of McKee Street like turtles on our backs trying to get back up.
At lunchtime on Friday, I stopped by the farmers’ market. The apples were crisp and the cider was sweet, all of it grown right here in our valley. It was one of the treats of the fall to get that really crisp apple with just the right tartness. In the interest of full disclosure I did pick up Pennsylvania junk food, too—whoopie pies.
Friday night I drove past the Nittany Lion shrine and recalled helping the Lion Ambassadors guard the shrine the night before a Homecoming game. My wife was the adviser to the student group and I left the event moved by the pride they had in our university.
Saturday night after the game I walked through campus from Beaver Stadium to my parents’ home. I saw the students hustling to head out for the night in their Halloween costumes. It was cool and a light breeze blew leaves across the campus sidewalk. As I walked I could hear the chatter of college students excited about a fun holiday night.
I thought back to my days in college walking through campus on a night much like that one. I was dressed warmly, holding hands with my date, a young lady with flashing eyes and glowing cheeks rosy from the cold. A spark of new love surged in the touch of our hands.
Sunday night as I worked on my computer, the World Series radio call of ESPN’s Jon Miller and Joe Morgan was in the background. I thought back to watching the Pirates and Orioles in the 1979 World Series in the basement of my house. My grandfather August Pohland sat rooting for the Pirates next to me in our basement.
Monday afternoon as we headed out to practice, Mount Nittany stood in the distance awash in her best coloring, the oranges, reds, browns and yellows providing a stunning blanket over her before she yields her leaves for the winter. In October of 1977 I spent a fall Saturday climbing that mountain as part of a friend’s birthday party before listening to the Penn State game at Syracuse on the radio.
Tuesday night I heard the Penn State Blue Band practicing for the weekend. The strains of the horns, the beat of the drums could be heard when I walked out of my office into the night air. I was once again a College Heights kid listening to the sound of band practice on the intramural fields drifting my way.
Autumn is really a season of transition, a season that reminds us all as we get older that we, too, will reach the autumn of our lives and eventually the winter beyond. It offers moments to recall the spring and summer of our lives as we move forward in the seasons of our lives.
But the beauty of life here in State College is that autumn is a time of renewal as students return and the activity level of this town explodes. That is part of what drives so many of us to return.
We walk the same streets and pass some of the same buildings we knew in our younger days. Places where important scenes of our lives played out in acts that alternated among drama, tragedy and comedy, and were woven into the people we became.
Whether we live here or are just visiting, we feel that spark and the spell is cast once again.
