Your webmaster will admit straight out that autumn is my favorite time of year; I somehow make it through every summer while waiting for the time when I can wear a jacket again. I feel naked without one. Other than Coney Island I haven’t been to a beach in decades. My skin is translucent. I check off the calendar till October arrives. Imagine my anxiety this year when summer held firm through the early weeks of October 2007 with day after day of 85 degree weather.
Ah, then things broke and November was one of the best in years with an absolute riot of color; Vermont and New Hampshire, eat your heart out. It was all too brief. The day after Thanksgiving, every leaf in Queens fell to the ground. That day I write this, December 2, 2007, we saw our first snow storm of the winter.
No railings against dopey developers, longings for the days when Corvington lampposts dominated the landscape, or abandoned pipe factories in Staten Island today. Just a little autumno-porn without Jenna Jamison or Ron Jeremy since here the leaves fall, not the clothes. These scenes are fleeting; a couple of days later, all had disappeared.
Little Neck Parkway and 40th Avenue
Selfridge Street and Yellowstone Boulevard, Forest Hills. (I have yet to figure out why Queens has a Yellowstone Blvd.; whenever I’m here, I think of the Yogi Bear theme: “he’ll have every picnic basket that’s in Jellystone Park.”)
39th Avenue, Little Neck
12/2/07