In the early 1980's when I was still flying and was stationed in Biloxi Mississippi, an annual NATO exercises took place in Germany in the fall and it seemed almost every year I was TDY there throughout September.  Luckily, the Fall season got a late start in the deep South and since the days were still quite pleasant through late November, I didn't miss that much of the great fall weather. 

     Hil and I both loved horseback riding and we rode as often as possible.  Most fall weekends we would drive north from Biloxi to the stables at Lyman.  We loved trail riding any time but it was so much more fun on those beautiful late Autumn weekend mornings.   The stable had a lot of property of its own and it bordered on a large forest preserve.  Apparently, the owners had made arrangements with the Forestry Dept. to use some of the trails for horseback riding as well (or, perhaps, they just went ahead and used it without permission, I don't know??). 

     At any rate, the result was about 30 miles of wooded, winding and crisscrossing trails and streams to ride through.  By late October or early November, while days were still warm, the late night and early morning could get chilly.  That briskness put extra spirit in the horses and they were always very frisky and eager to run on those cool mornings.  It was the best time of the year for riding down there and what great fun that was! 

     When our daughters were little, major effort was expended in September and early October getting them to decide what they wanted to be for Halloween.  In the early-mid 1970s we didn't have all the Halloween specialty costume stores that are around now.  The big department stores like Sears, Wards and J. C. Penney's dedicated several pages of their Fall catalogs to kids costumes.  I remember the girls spending hours mulling them over, trying to make a decision.  Some of the local department stores and drug stores also carried costumes but not to the extent they do now. 

     Of course, it often didn't matter what costume they picked as it was not uncommon for them to change their minds a couple days before Halloween and we had to scramble around to find another costume or resort to some ingenuity to make a new one.  Now that our kids are grown, and we have grandchildren, our Fall and Halloween fun has shifted gears.  It's now up to Denise and her husband to do the running around for her kids costumes.  All we have to do is enjoy looking at the final product.