This time of year is my favorite. The air is crisp and clear, but we also have days of thunderstorms with intense lightening and thundering booms. They tend to reverberate up and down the canyon we live in. It is an awesome sound.

When I was a girl, my father took us on wonderful 3 week trips every summer. We mostly went to the Western National Parks to include Yosemite and Grand Teton. We would go as a family with other families. It was always a social time. Camping, cooking, hiking together with other people was so much fun.

The singing around the campfire with made up songs that to this day I remember the words. Mostly, I remember the thunderstorms that would roll in most afternoons. We would gather in our tent and play cards and talk. Sometimes we had to cook dinner inside if the storm lasted. The thundering booms and flashes of lightening were so exciting! My Dad loved a good thunderstorm, and so I did too!

The autumn also mean’t it was almost my birthday which is in the month of October. Then Halloween which has always been one of my favorite holidays. I have fond memories of trick’o’treating with my neighborhood friends each year. My Dad would make it even more fun. He would walk with us, then disappear. Suddenly, he would reappear again, scaring us silly.

My mother did not want to miss out on any fun. She would decorate our front walkway with lighted pumpkins. She also put on the Disney vinyl Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted Mansion.

She would also dress up like a witch in a costume she made herself which included an excellent looking hat. She would turn out all the lights in the house. Some kids were afraid to actually go up to the door. We did live up in Los Altos Hills, which didn’t have the greatest street lighting. I always thought that was the best.

We always collected spare change when we went out into the neighborhood for UNICEF. We carried little cardboard boxes. We asked folks if they had any spare change for the kids that didn’t get to go “trick-or-treating”.

It was a naive time for me growing up in the 1970’s. Even then, I was thinking of my fellow humans.

Before social media, IPhones, the Internet, even before computers were widely used. It was a slower time, but I am so grateful it is when I was alive.

Thank you for reading my blog and I hope wherever you may be you are enjoying a lovely autumn!

Tschüss!

Liebe, Kat