It'll Never Last

Fall is my favorite season of the year. I know that it technically starts on or around the 22nd of September, but I say it starts the first week of October for a lot of reasons.

In Sports:

The Baseball regular season ends, thank God.

The Hockey regular season begins. Go Hawks!

The college football season starts conference play. Those Eastern Michigan vs. Ohio State game are thrillers but..

The NFL is getting into full swing. Go Bears!

And the NBA begins training camp, complete with full coverage of the Miami Heat by ESPN. Go Bulls!

But besides sports, there are other reasons I like the advent of autumn.
As someone who has worked outside his whole life, I really enjoy the brisk mornings and the lower humidities these fall days bring. I love the trees changing colors. I love wearing hooded sweatshirts. I love high school football on a cool fall night, though they start the season way too early now-a-days. I like that it gets darker earlier, although I'll hate those 4:30 sunsets soon enough. Having grown up in a rural area, I like seeing farmers out harvesting their crops at all hours of the day and night. I like apples, pumpkin pie and cider. Bonfires, tailgating, driving down a scenic road just marveling at the foliage.
Yeah, I know the clocks ticking. My father-in-law Conway would say on a day just like today: "What a beautiful day". "Yeah but it'll never last" replied my wife's pessimistic Uncle Dean. Thinking only of the winter that would soon be upon us. I guess it really is all in the way we look at things.

Who is this guy?

"Hey Conway!" a builder asked my father-in-law, "what does the mortar do, hold the bricks together or keep them apart?"
"Keeps 'em from rattling" was the usual quick witted response from Conway Nelson, a six foot five inch, 260 plus pound giant of a man whose presence was larger than life even outdoors.

I met my future father-in-law in the summer of 1975 on a softball field in one of Chicago's south suburbs. A blue Cadillac Eldorado pulls up and immediately the guys were acting like a rock star just showed up. I was the new guy. My parents moved from my hometown forty miles away during my senior year in high school. I stayed with friends to finish rather than enrolling into gigantic Homewood-Flossmoor High School for two months. The day after my graduation, I moved in with my parents in their apartment and as such was expected to attend Church every Sunday as long as I was under their roof. Lucky for me this church had a very active youth group and that's how I ended up on that field that day.

"Who's that? I asked one of my new friends.
"That's Connie Nelson" he replied.
"He looks just like Dick Butkus" was the first thing I said..
The resemblance was uncanny, think Miller Lite, Tastes Great, bowling with Bubba Smith Dick Butkus.



Conway could be a stand-in on a Hollywood set for him. He once signed an autograph for a drunk in an airport lobby who told him "I know Dick, you're travelling incognito" despite his best efforts to convince him he was not the real Dick Butkus.
We met he told me he had met my Dad in church and then it happened. It happened to any young man  who met him. The Handshake. A death grip that tested your strength, stamina and pain tolerance all at once. You expect the normal 'how are you' hand shake and the next thing you see is a hand the size of a youth baseball mitt squeezing the life and feeling right out of your hand. The others guys laugh knowingly as they have seen this a million times before and were all once victims of the Handshake themselves.

I don't remember much else about that first meeting, except the last words he said to me. "I love you buddy". And off he went. He had that John Wayne, just got off a horse and enters the bar walk.


Adjusting his belt as he walked away you notice the slightly bowed legs and how huge his back and shoulders were. I was wondering why a forty something dude just stops by a church softball game for a few minutes. I was also curious as to the reception he got from the guys.

"He lost his only son a few months ago" my friend said, " he had a brain tumor. It was really sad".