I Love the Fall

Dear Lucy,
Today is a cool, blustery, cloudy day. The kind that starts to blow the turned leaves from their perches on the trees and sends them skittering down streets.
I love the fall. I love the crispness in the air, the turning of the leaves and the wind storms. I also love the colors. The browns and yellows and oranges of the trees, the bright pumpkins and other squashes and the spent yellow corn stalks and hay in the barns and the smokey scent of the fireplaces and wood stoves.
I also love Halloween. I love Halloween more than any other "holiday", and always have.
As a little girl I thought that Charlie Brown discovered Halloween because of the cartoon. I thought it was just the best idea in the world: dress up for a whole day as anybody or anything you wanted to be and then romp through the neighborhood after dark and get candy for it. And go to school dressed up. WOW!
I wanted to be Snoopy flying around in his Sopwith Camel chasing the Red Baron or sneaking through the woods to a French cafe to drink Root Beer. Mostly it was that he was having this fabulous adventure alone in his own imagination, while everyone else was being part of the crowd.
But, someone had to be part of the crowd. And someone had to have faith in The Great Pumpkin as Linus did. And someone had to go around with a million holes in his ghost costume and get rocks instead of candy and someone had to go off in their imagination to other callings.
Maybe my love for Snoopy, is why I have a beagle.
--Kathy