The autumn season, just started officially, is now far enough along to bring the pro football season to an (extra) point where a team as of this weekend could have, conceivably, faced all the other rivals in their division. Depending on which one we’re in. If they consist of five (teams), they’re still possibly alive.
In our case, up in the Midwest, it started with those two rivals in states that are adjoining east-west, the ol’ Packers and Vikings, squaring off already in the season and of course division opener. Only the dreaded Bears, also in an adjoining state in the case of The Pack, have more often been faced, usually in frigid temps but that will come later. The Detroit debacles would be delayed in the season and its overtime. This as an online commentator recently aligned with historic Alary’s in downtown St. Paul and their famous founder and player, a late lineman from the south side of Chicago. (Note to me: It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to cavort a bit with bartender Crystal by the cooler, not to mention banter with Bree, all in their trademark skimpy referee outfits. Just ask another true fan when he’s in town, none other than Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, as we all go that far back. The ladies looked far less grungy.)
So the gridiron is in the news, and it started the week before the Minnesota-Green Bay game arrived to end it on Sunday, I made a foray to the local sports bar and within a beer-pour length there was on a pro football station a preview of this grid goliath, from among all the other contests it could have picked. As I glanced up at the TV screen for one of the first times, I spied a muscled but still lightweight player lunge with his ball toward a flag — its stripes marking the corner of the end zone. Days earlier, the Vikes made a national newscast with the story line of their vaunted defense, as usual, and that of the Ravens also maybe getting a new look with a new prompted by their new coordinator. Offenses still suck.
As it was, Green Bay bolted to a bigger than usual lead, but couldn’t hold it in the second half, so put the opener in their loss column. One and done and afterward they have none. Zero and one. The battle of the century turned into one, maybe, of the decade. At least, minus Rodgers, who was in a darkness retreat somewhere far afield, there was some offense …
Meanwhile, a man across the bar offered me his trademark beer nuts — after suggesting them to the guy sitting next to him, an offering from the end of his canned jar that was tipped and slanted with peanut-kind-of-things in the direction of his new friend. I took a few, faithfully with him to the green and gratefully too, but I asked the two of them if the passion would be the same if these were dry, honey roasted nuts. Never! They need to named so that they match the beer. And I was told by my doc that since I’m too high on triglycerides, I need to intake more mixed nuts in my diet, like the ones mom puts out when I visit. Mixed nuts. Like the division? Or was this mindless bar talk?
But maybe this is not, as far as nuts, as was published statewide: It’s a banner year for oaks and their acorns now dropping, like few we have seen, and although it might take some doing, these when entrenched with their long tap roots, might even crowd out the buckthorn. Haha. As both the reds and the whites, unlike the elm and ash, are thriving.
A quick game of pool — then a second, but there would be no third period — followed this focus on football and its accompanying nuts, with my partner (now a new friend?) saying he’d carry this old sot on his back like a frosty parka brushing off the cold. The man slinged and shot well, but we both noticed that the table was poorly aligned and positioned, meaning there was a machine for cashing out too close to one of the corner pockets, and the jukebox too close to another, so to shoot he had to raise his stick up way too high and arch it (OK, get your mind out of the gutter.) Meanwhile, the machine cranked out the Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald, reminders of the ship’s dining hall in the song, or the pool table in this bar, that were slanted because of blowing in the harsh galestorm wind. “And the lake it is said never gives up its dead, when the gales of November come early.” Like the wind that would blow off the St. Croix River on my walk home, like the great ship coming “from some mill in Wisconsin.” (I wonder if the song should have really referenced a tawdry taconite mine in Minnesota?)
But in addition now on weekends, with the first day of fall just passed, it’s more about eating apples — before they’re frozen into mush — and picking pumpkins to be carved, while the hulls are still crisp. Like a shirt at a boutique down the way from me, seen while walking quickly in the midnight breeze, championing bonfires and campfires, flannel shirts and s’mores, and more. A curiosities store not far from the pool hall had found another way to bee: It had for sale four oversize and otherwise empty, ornamental and cardboard “honeycomb” and other creations, with rolls showing holes about in inch in diameter. Many hundreds of them. Those big bees apparently could not keep up just prior to the close of the season, and thus the harvest.
The next door down was a Dunn Bros. coffee shop, not to open for a few hours yet, that I have referenced many times. It championed pumpkin spice and maple pancake chicken (with I’m sure some caramel nut) creations. This is noteworthy because McDonalds recently made news, after selling in total billions and billions, by replacing for fall its pumpkin spice latte with new caramel apple pie.
Meanwhile, other places, sale items included a recipe for fudge cornbread brownies, as I will take the liberty of describing them, to go with my now-dug-into apple cinammon muffin mix and custom fudge cheesecake spread I haven’t eaten yet that’s leftover from Christmas gifting (ouch), Oreos of a truffles persuasion, and pumpkin again and New York style cheesecake bites, marked by those little stripes of glaze amidst the white frosting.
Up on the pumpkin-laden hill, a big grocery store had an outside-the-doors sale of three kinds of planted in pots annuals: Fall mums, kale and ornamental pepper. I’d associated these more with August than autumn, and not with eating them up. As those shoppers briskly walking away in the emptier part of the parking lot saw their umbrellas flapping upward in yet another set of wind gusts, and barely could contain their hold on the handles.