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Things that fall

| October 30, 2008 11:00 PM

The Trailwatcher

G. George Ostrom

The leaves are falling. The leaves are falling. They are beautiful. They are everywhere. BUT … the fun of fall has been greatly reduced since we "city dwellers" are no longer allowed to put them in a pile and stand around inhaling the most wondrous fragrance of autumn … burning leaves. In the olden days that fragrance would hang in the village air for several weeks, and nobody I knew died from the fumes. How I miss those golden days of yore.

Was thinking about taking a few sacks of my town leaves to our rural land in the North Fork and having at least an hour or so of oldtime sniffing, but then figured out the gas bill would be about forty dollars. That sort of thing can take much of the joy out of burning leaf sniffing.

Leaves were the subject of a full page cartoon in a recent Readers Digest. Looking through a museum's large window it showed trees shedding and people raking, while inside other people were sweeping up leaves that had fallen from certain discreet places on the otherwise nude statues inside. The cartoon caused me to send Readers Digest a toast poem heard long ago at a college dinner. This is it:

"Here is to Eve, the mother of our race,

Who wore all her leaves, in just the right place.

And here is to Adam, the father of us all,

Who was Johnny on the spot, when the leaves began to fall."

Am now hoping for a check from the magazine, but was not able to give credit because the author is unknown.

Speaking of credit, my column of last week said Curly Hansen had written the short biography of Michael R. Jorgensen. Have since learned that it was actually written by Jorgie's lifelong friend, Eric Smith, who is a realtor here in the Flathead. It was also Eric who handed the $200,000 check from Jorgie's estate over to University of Montana officials at the Grizzly game, although Curly was there as a friend and administrator of Jorgie's estate. Both men had known my "adopted son" since his parents were killed in a fire when Jorgie was 16 years old. Credit where credit is due! That was a stressful column for me to write and I apologize for the errors.

Am a bit disabled this week from a sports related injury. Fell and hit ribs on a hard piece of furniture. Had been sitting in a recliner chair for three hours last Sunday. Got up suddenly, unbalanced, and stumbled. It was "sports related" because I had been watching pro football.

Having broken ribs many times, I know nothing was broken this time but a cracked or bruised rib cage can be very disabling and long to heal. Am embarrassed because all other rib cage injuries came from adventures in the great outdoors, parachuting accidents, big game hunting, or mountain climbing. Maybe it is not too disgraceful to damage oneself at home when you're over eighty.

Just heard from a reliable source that the fire department in Minot, North Dakota, had so many obscene telephone calls they got an unlisted number.