By Rick Houser-
It might only be the season of the year that causes us to look skyward just a little bit more often. One never knows when you might get a glimpse of a goblin or a witch flying on her broomstick in front of that moon. It of course is doubtful but there must be something said for this time of year and all the hoopla that is delivered with it. It’s time to display all of autumn’s beauty and this includes the nights as much as the days that are a little spooky.
To that part I don’t lend too much of my time to. Of course there will be Halloween and all of what comes with it. However for me I see summer in my rear view mirror and autumn smack dab upon us. But more than just the leaves preparing to deliver their art show, there is the moon. I mean not just any moon but the Harvest Moon that is big up in the sky when it is full but even more when October and its full moon shows up and is so much brighter. I feel kind of what it must feel like if I were in Alaska when it is in the middle of their summer and the sun never really sets.
When we were still farming, we would continue to harvest and do our chores far past sunset and do them with ease and kind of the cool feeling of doing them by moonlight (our tractor lights never seemed to work). Even after I left the farm I have mowed in the late fall or mulched leaves with my riding mower by the light of the autumn moon. To me it is just a feeling of being allowed to do something different, only because Mother Nature says we can.
After the corn was all picked we would disc the fields and drill wheat in the ground so that it formed a way to stop erosion and give us our first harvest crop of a new year. One fall the season got late and I was drilling the wheat and as the days got shorter I ran out of sunlight but I drilled a good third of a seven-acre field by a brilliant November full moon. I wanted to think that the moon was super bright so I went back in a few weeks to see just how much ground I had missed drilling wheat in the dark. To my surprise and delight, I hadn’t missed one bit. (When it happens that way for sure it just makes for a better story.)
When I was a boy of maybe five I was a tag along to my sister and brother. I’m sure I could make myself a real pest but I think they just traded off taking turns with me so that they could handle it. When their friends would come around, and they being so much older than me, I couldn’t help but want to be visible. Ben’s friends being high school boys would put me to challenges to prove I was cool. One such way to be cool in those days was to smoke. One night when my parents weren’t home they told me I had to smoke a cigarette to hang with them. At the time they were seniors and I was a third grader. I said, “Give me one”, and having watched so many folks smoke I knew how to light one up and as they watched I smoked the entire thing and didn’t turn green or show any sign of sickness. Truth was I was dizzy as all get out but I wasn’t going to give in. They were so surprised that I got to hang with them any time they were around and it was one thing I never told my parents.
As for my sister Peg, she had girlfriends who would always comment on how cute I was and any little child will tell you that was like the pied piper calling you. One Saturday night they decided they would treat me by taking me to Frisch’s down in New Richmond. They bought me a Big Boy and fries along with a Coke. Being treated that way just made me feel like the king of the night. A couple of Moscow boys they knew asked for a ride home so they got in the car and Peg took them back to Moscow. I just thought it cool to be in a car full of kids 12 years older than me and I thought I was running the show. They just let me think that.
I think that by this time they were feeling they had treated me as nice as they needed to and it was time to round my evening up. They had a plan. Peg drove out to a place that to this day I don’t know where it was. We went back a long driveway and pulled up in front of an old abandoned house and around it was a corn field where the corn had been cut and tied into fodder shocks for as far as you could see. I remember I could see far as the moon was full that night and as bright a moon as any I have ever seen then or since.
Peg’s friends used to stay at our house some nights and they would tell me scary bedtime stories. Here was their plan. We were out near Halloween and in a cornfield in front of an abandoned house. That was when they began to tell me scary stories about spooks and goblins and witches. But you see I put a catch in their plan.
The more they told me the stories the more I liked them and instead of wanting to go home I wanted to stay out there and hear more stories. This put a kink in their plan for my evening and finally Peg took me home and against my wishes my Saturday night was over and Peg and the girls all went back out for the rest of the evening. To this day I still think this was one of the greatest times in my growing up with my siblings and since there were always a full moon involved in the experiences. I recall them almost every time that I look up.
There is something magnetic about that old moon that draws us to it whether we know it or not. I love looking at it even more this time of year. When it is all full and bright just take a drive out on a side road and as you move along, look up. That bright moon is a very big part of the season.
Rick Houser grew up on a farm near Moscow in Clermont County and loves to share his stories and other topics with others. If you would like to read more of his writings he has two books that are available. He can be reached at [email protected]. Or you can write to him at P.O. Box 213 Bethel, Ohio 45106.
