Let it cool a little longer

JOSEPH N. BELL

Yesterday, my wife -- when I wasn’t paying attention -- called the

Gas Company to send someone out to light our wall furnace pilots.

“Why did you do that,” I asked her, “when I know quite well how to

light the pilots?”

“Because,” she said, “I feel safer if they do it. And I want to

watch them so I know how to do it myself. Then, when it gets cold, I

don’t have to wait for you to get around to it. Besides, I can bend

over better than you can.”

Most of this is inaccurate, of course, except the bending. I’m as

safe as the Gas Company, and I get our heaters working when the

weather turns truly cold. But Sherry heats our house by the calendar

rather than the thermometer. Cold weather begins Oct. 1. Not a day

later. That’s when she cracks out her winter comforter and huddles

under it while I throw off the sheet. That’s also when she begins

talking quite insistently about lighting the pilot.

I consider this a crime against fall, the most glorious time of

the year. The occasional bite of cold air that might require a

blanket but certainly not a comforter tells us that the lethargy of

summer is over and we need to address life head on once again. At

least, that’s what it meant during the years I lived in the Midwest.

It told us there would be snow but not yet. It smelled of burning

leaves and popcorn and tasted of cider and taffy apples. It put

stride in your walk and zest in your soul. Some of that carries over

to Southern California, but it’s the one time of year I’d rather be

somewhere else north of here.

Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are the only three states in the

U.S. that I’ve never visited, and each year, we cut out pictures and

stories about fall travel packages in those states, but we haven’t

managed it yet. We did get to the mountains of North Carolina to

marvel at the fall colors two years ago, and last week, the Los

Angeles Times featured a color spread on Utah’s Zion National Park,

which is only a short day’s drive away. So we’re thinking about that.

Meanwhile, the Gas Company will come calling.

The rich and soothing colors of fall are especially welcome

because October is such a stressful month, made more stressful this

year by the Sacramento coup and the pilot lighting caper. These

diversions have been piled atop the normal stress of the confluence

of the baseball, football and basketball seasons -- one ending, one

in the middle, and one about to begin -- which properly demands my

full attention. (I understand the ongoing ice hockey season is also

of interest to some local immigrants from Canada.)

Last Saturday, when the stress stepped up considerably, will

illustrate. I had agreed in a careless moment some weeks before to

attend a high school reunion with my wife on that day and evening.

Had I checked schedules beforehand, I could have projected two

baseball playoff games on that day and would certainly have known

that the University of Missouri -- from which I graduated several

years ago -- would also be playing Nebraska. All things considered, I

probably still would have gone to the reunion, but at least I would

have weighed the risks of not going first.

Finally, in October, there’s Halloween, which has not been a

favorite holiday for me since kids started carrying shopping bags

instead of soaping up the windows of hostile neighbors. When I was a

kid, Halloween was the one holiday all year when we could express

ourselves in an adult world. Now, its major saving grace for me is

the gigantic Halloween balloon display we have grown to expect from

our neighbor, Treb Heining.

The weather we’re having these days in California is what, in the

Midwest, we called Indian summer. (This doesn’t parse at all if you

get politically correct and call it Native American summer.) Indian

summer was a brief throwback to warm weather after the first cold

spell had arrived. As the song says, “It’s the tear that comes after

June-time laughter.” Remember that when you turn the clock back.

*

Many years ago, Rush Limbaugh -- when he was still polishing his

right-wing attack mode -- spoke at UC Irvine. A curious friend took

me to hear him.

At that point, I knew nothing about him, but it took about 10

incredulous minutes to pick up the hate-mongering message he was

offering to an audience clearly ready to embrace any public figure

who might justify for them their own hatreds and fears. He’s been

performing that service ever since.

People like Limbaugh and William Bennett, who make a great deal of

money by telling other people how to shape up morally, run a basic

risk. If they are ever exposed as not following their own advice, the

hypocrisy can -- and should -- be multiplied many times over.

That is now happening to Limbaugh as a result of his admission

that he has, for the last six years, been addicted to prescription

painkillers, which he allegedly sometimes procured illegally.

The mea culpas being heard now remind me that double standards for

the rich and powerful will probably never go away. But maybe

Limbaugh’s admissions will, at least, make us a little more skeptical

and a little less accepting of the moralists in our midst who would

define right and wrong for us in their own self-aggrandizing,

absolute terms.

And even though they took place in another state, Limbaugh’s

difficulties might also influence our new governor to examine one

sure-fire method of public cost-cutting. Instead of building more

prisons and hiring high-priced guards, California could save millions

of dollars by offering victimless drug users treatment rather than

locking them up. Ironically, that might allow Rush Limbaugh to turn

his problems into a legitimate public service.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.