Chrysanthemums

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There are certain fragrances that are the harbinger of autumn. Chrysanthemums and fallen leaves do it for me. I am like the salmon that with a fresh fall rain seem to smell their way upstream. In the same way, okay, only different . . . when I smell the fall woods and gardens I get a mean hankering for real apple cider and fresh donuts (doughnuts for the grammar geeks). Now when I say real apple cider I mean cold pressed and bottled into jugs. Not homogenized cooked apple juice. And it has to be cold, really cold. The donuts should be cake donuts, freshly cooked in oil so that they form at crust. They can be plain or rolled in powdered sugar.

No matter what diet I am on, it isn’t officially fall until I have had my cider and donuts fix. I have driven hours to find them when I lived in places that did not celebrate these delicacies such as in California and Oklahoma. I have been known to purchase and freeze gallons of cider at a time to make sure I had plenty for Thanksgiving and for mulled Wassail at Christmas. I like to hoard the stuff just in case there is somebody else from New Jersey with this strange malady ready to corner the market ahead of me.

As kids we would ride our bikes four miles each way to an old apple orchard called Tice’s Farm. They had cider on spigot taps all along an old wooden gutter/rain trough. It was 10 cents for an empty cup and then all the cider you could drink. The key was that they kept it so cold that you would get an ice cream headache if you drank too much too fast. The donuts were a nice complement, all steamy hot and sweet. I just had my fix today but I left out the eight-mile bike ride. Bet that explains why I was so fit as a kid and now if I eat a donut I look like a donut.

I remember wearing knee socks and plaid wool Bermuda shorts on those brisk Saturdays. And of course an oxford shirt with a Peter Pan collar was topped with a woolen cable knit sweater. Back East, where I grew up, I think we wore knee socks and shorts until it snowed. It made for some mighty chapped knees, but shorts were in. Not to school of course. To school you had to wear dresses or skirts. On cold days I wore pants under my dresses until I got to school. We all wore a lot of plaids back then too, it seemed to be the official garb of fall. We looked as if we were celebrating a grand Tattoo marching along to school. I had a plaid lunchbox and even plaid glasses frames.

But it is the aroma of chrysanthemums that fills my head with childhood visions of long walks through fields of goldenrod and purple asters. Red and orange falling leaves crunched under the wheels of my bike tires, acorns snapped, frost on the grasses glowed a ghostly white. Autumn recalls football games, back when women wore corsages for events. Homecoming games in particular were big on giant mums. My mother always had centerpieces of chrysanthemums and carnations in the house. It filled the house with a spicy scent that announced back to school, but also that the fun holidays were coming. And cider and donuts are definitely on the menu.

Sally Franz is a former stand-up comedian, motivational speaker, and radio host. She is a twice-divorced mother of two and a grandmother of three. Sally has a degree in gerontology and several awards for humor writing. She is the author of Scrambled Leggs: A Snarky Tale of Hospital Hooey
and The Baby Boomers Guide to Menopause.