This 12 months, because it typically does, our Southern California autumn started scorching. Early October was no joke, with temperatures above 100 right here in Riverside. However all I heard from mates and neighbors on night walks was, “I really like October! Halloween is coming! And we’ve acquired the Dodgers!”
Everybody is aware of what folks take into consideration California — that we’ve got no seasons right here, particularly no fall, no vivid foliage, no harvest festivals. However they don’t perceive the good, intense and colourful season that’s October.
The colours are astonishing. Brochures all the time function the identical palm timber, however in October, it’s the large silk floss timber with their vibrant inexperienced trunks that burst into bloom with large neon pink flowers, Seussian of their cartoonish loveliness. Mine is the queen of the neighborhood, seen for blocks at 40 toes tall and stuffed with hummingbirds flashing crimson and inexperienced as they battle for nectar. Alongside the freeways, sunflowers bloom with golden depth in counterpoint to the autumn bougainvillea, tumbling down partitions and fences, bursting like fireworks — magenta, peach, gold, pale pink.
The silk floss timber and bougainvillea should not indigenous; they’re from South America, however they flourish right here. Once I stroll to the top of my block and onto the Santa Ana River trails, native California takes over and makes autumn really feel like dwelling. Cottonwoods shimmer pale inexperienced and gold, willows fade to yellow, and my favourite tree, the sycamore, glows within the late afternoon warmth, leaves massive as dinner plates, a phenomenal ochre.
After all, crucial shade this fall is blue — Dodger blue. Flags are in every single place on my block, however not the Mexican Dodger flag the Soria household subsequent door normally places up, as a result of we’re all superstitious and an excessive amount of hope would possibly jinx every little thing. All of them — 5 children, two mother and father and a grandparent — determined to not put on their jerseys throughout the playoff video games however their Virgin of Guadalupe was hung close to the big-screen TV. They’ve a brand new pit bull pet — named Dodger.
Throughout the road, one other neighbor ceaselessly has Dodger watch events on the outside display in his yard. Within the division collection towards the Padres, when it was nonetheless over 100 levels, we had been all nervous. When Shohei, Mookie, Teoscar or Max hit a house run, we may hear screaming up and down the block.
Moises, from left, Arabella, Adalynn and Alex Soria, holding their pet Dodger, in entrance of the author’s dwelling and its blooming silk floss tree. Out of superstition, the household didn’t put on their Dodger jerseys throughout the playoff collection towards the Mets.
(Susan Straight)
The Dodgers are in my blood. My mom, from Switzerland, got here to Fontana after which Riverside when she was 19. She carried a transistor radio together with her in every single place whereas she listened to the Dodgers, studying to talk English from Vin Scully. She was pregnant with me in October 1960 when the workforce completed fourth within the Nationwide League, however I’m positive that from the womb, I heard her cheering. The Dodgers received World Sequence pennants in 1963 and 1965 — these I bear in mind, however solely because the sound of fixed applause on the radio. I grew up surrounded by adults who listened to transistor radios — of their shirt pockets, like my father, father-in-law and my mom, who carried hers round and propped it within the yard whereas we weeded the greens.
This fall, my mom and I hear collectively on my automotive radio whereas I take her locations. She is 89 and he or she has dementia. She will be able to’t identify all of the gamers, however her pleasure proper now’s Shohei Ohtani. “He’s an immigrant, like me!” she mentioned, tears streaming down her face when he hit his record-breaking dwelling run in September.
My mother cherished Fernando Valenzuela too, cherished that he’d come to California for his goals. When he died Tuesday, I remembered watching him together with her and the remainder of my household, that prime leg kick and large grin that helped the Dodgers beat the Yankees in October of 1981, one thing we hopefully will repeat this time.
This Blue October has been nice. My letter service listens on his Bluetooth. He lives in San Jacinto and has pushed to San Diego to select up his girlfriend earlier than driving to Dodger Stadium for a sport; afterward it’s again to San Diego, then San Jacinto, almost 300 miles in all. I bumped into a person at Ralph’s who advised me he grew up in El Monte. His dad got here dwelling from work in the summertime, he’d bathe, fill a thermos with espresso, and drive the household to Dodger Stadium the place his father would take heed to the sport on the radio within the stands, filling out his scorecard. That’s precisely what I bear in mind from all these years going to video games with my mother and father: the 5 of us children with our Cracker Jacks, me trying down the rows at fingers gripping radios like talismans.
On Sunday, when the Dodgers beat the Mets to advance to the World Sequence, I used to be subsequent door with the Sorias, bearing good luck cookies, holding the child on my lap whereas all of us screamed. And on Friday, all the very best components of October will mild up Southern California. Halloween and Dia de los Muertos decorations will glow within the night time, scarlet bougainvillea blooms will swirl alongside the sidewalks, and the Dodgers will play the Yankees.
I shall be too nervous to observe, in order I’ve all fall I’ll activate AM 570: Dwelling of Dodgers Radio on my telephone, slide it into the pocket of my cargo pants and stroll the canine across the neighborhood, listening like my forebears who heard voices calling the video games from their pockets, or clutched fingers at video games, or on porches and patios in October — if we had been fortunate. At my toes would be the first fallen leaves of the sycamores, their veined facilities holding the recent sundown, as they’ve because the starting of time, in autumn.
Susan Straight’s newest novel is “Mecca.” Her new novel, “Sacrament,” shall be printed in October 2025. She is a contributing author to Opinion.
