Sunday Pumpkin Spice Latte. Celebrating 50 Years of Autumn

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."
                                                                    Albert Camus

Typically a Sunday post is Sunday coffee. Today, to honor the new season I've decided to try a pumpkin spice latte.  This is going to amuse my daughter in law who notes my contempt for mamby pamby coffee drinks.  So instead of a bagel with my latte, I'll be having a small helping of crow.  Not a problem though; I hear crow has fewer calories than a bagel.  And so without further ado.

In the autumn of my seventh year:  A latte was a caffelatte and it was an Italian breakfast drink. Even in my 7th year I had caffelatte when I visited family in Italy.  It was espresso or a strong coffee with heated (not steamed) milk.  There were no variants with myriad flavors; coffee and milk.  My aunt would bring it to the table for breakfast, on a tray with a tin of biscotti.  A word of warning to anyone going to Italy and ordering a latte with biscotti.  What you will get is a glass of milk and an assortment of cookies.  You see latte means milk and biscotti refers to cookies not just the elongated cookies we associate the term with here.
In the autumn of my fifty-seventh year:  I'm having a pumpkin spice latte and not really loving it.  Tastes plastic, phony pumpkin.  I would love a caffelatte any time if I were sitting in a piazza in Rome or Venice (maybe Harry's Bar).  It doesn't get much better than that.  But to a picky curmudgeon this whole multi-flavored latte deal is a distant kin to the many "tini" drinks served in bars today.  There is a martini and it is gin and a hint of vermouth.  When you drink one you should either taste gin, or if you don't like gin you would probably say turpentine.  But it shouldn't taste of apples, chocolate, cranberries, caramel or some other fountain drink.

In the autumn of my seventh year:  The Detroit Lions beat the Green Bay Packers, 23 – 10 in The Thanksgiving Day game played in Detroit annually since 1945.  The game was played at outdoor Tiger Stadium, in the elements the way it should be.  It was pretty much a blue collar, common man’s sport in those days.

In the autumn of my fifty-seventh year:  The Detroit Lions will once again play the Packers and they stand a decent chance of winning again this year.  The game will be played in a facility called Ford Field.  It is an indoor thing and therefore shouldn’t be called a football stadium.  In 1966 The Dallas Cowboys began hosting an annual Thanksgiving Day Game.  This year they will play in an ostentatious thing they call a stadium.  

In the autumn of my seventh year:  My second grade class was studying Africa and the class built a thatch hut inside the classroom.  The class size was probably in the neighborhood of twenty kids at Buena Vista School in San Mateo.

In the autumn of my fifty-seventh year:  In today’s budget slashed over-crowded classrooms you couldn’t find enough room to plop down a folded up pup tent let alone a full sized hut.  Buena Vista School is no longer; it was razed for a housing development.

A childhood Halloween treat

In the autumn of my seventh year:  I don’t know what the hell I was for Halloween but I remember that down the hill from my house there was a home where the family opened their garage and gave out cotton candy, cider and candied apples to the kids.  They had a very well trained German Shepherd named Caesar who was always loose in the front yard.  You see he was so well trained that he never left the boundary of his yard.  He might walk to the very edge but he never violated his bounds.  And no; there were no electronic/invisible fences then.

In the autumn of my fifty-seventh year:  No unwrapped anything.  Too many malevolent idiots out there.  I still look forward to Halloween and put a small autumn display on the front porch and often dress up in a costume (usually my Civil War reenacting uniform).  Sadly the neighborhood has grown older and there are few customers.

In the autumn of my seventh year:  It was, as always, my mom and dad and I for Thanksgiving Dinner.  A smallish turkey that still yielded a second Thanksgiving Dinner a couple days later, a dinner of turkey-a-la-king and a week or two worth of sandwiches with cranberries and dressing.

In the autumn of my fifty-seventh year:  My wife and I will once again host Thanksgiving Dinner for anywhere from 8 to 18 people.  It will be one giant bird and possibly an extra turkey breast and the yield for sandwiches is going to be meager; dammit.

In the autumn of my seventh year:  Mom made two pies for Thanksgiving; pumpkin and mincemeat and I loved them both.

In the autumn of my fifty-seventh year:  It will be at least three pies.  One might be mincemeat and I’ll only bake it because my wife enjoys it with tea.

In the autumn of my seventh year:  A fellow named Rolando Masferrer led a band of 27 men in a failed invasion of Cuba.  A number of the participants including three Americans were executed.

In the autumn of my fifty-seventh year:  Are you kidding me?  We still have strict, although loosened sanctions against Cuba as if that little nation is some sort of threat.  Or is it because we think it’s a repressive Communist regime?  Like, uh, China who we do a great deal of business with?  What’s the difference between one so-called repressive Communist government that we do business with and another repressive Communist government that we apply sanctions against?  Hmmm, could it be…money?  Nah.  I say let's open it up and give our little southern neighbor a chance to prosper.

Everyone's aunt & could she bake

In the autumn of my seventh year:  Among the television shows that premiered; My Three Sons, and The Andy Griffith Show which launched Francis Bavier’s character, Aunt Bea as a sort of symbol of the matronly homebody who keeps the perfect house and serves up endless helpings of comfort food and homey comfort.  It was also the year The Flintstones debuted; a show that I consider to be an animated knock off of The Honeymooners.  “Willllmaaaaa!!!”  I actually liked all three shows and every now and then catch a rerun of Andy Griffith.

Debuting on TV. But can they bake?

In the autumn of my fifty-seventh year:  I don’t really give a damn what’s premiering but for the sake of discussion there are some eyebrow raisers.  The Playboy Club debuts this fall.  I guess it’s a show about a guy who lounges around in a mansion, wears pajamas all day long and is surrounded by a bunch of young women who cavort around the house nearly nekkid.  Geeze where in the hell did my career path go wrong?  Another new show is Pan Am about the now defunct airline in the sixties.  That was around the autumn of my seventh year.  From the ABC synopsis of the show, “the stewardesses are the most desirable women in the world….Rounding out the crew are flirtatious Collette (Karine Vanasse), the adventurous Kate (Kelli Garner) and, finally, Laura (Margot Robbie) - Kate's beauty queen younger sister, a runaway bride, who recently fled a life of domestic boredom to take to the skies.”  In many of my younger years I flew on Pan Am, including the summer of my fourth year when I flew to Europe on a DC-7.  For the uninitiated, that would be an aircraft powered by four prop engines.  Yeah I’m that old but I'm proud to be able to say that I rode to Europe on a prop job.  Finally another debut this year is a retreading of Charlie’s Angels about 3 beautiful private investigators described by ABC as, among other things, “sexy.”  And so three debuts later is the women's movement taking three giant steps backwards? 

George inspired a hit song

In the autumn of my seventh year:  One of October’s number one songs was “Mr. Custer,” by Larry Verne.  I remember that song.  It was a novelty song; a lighthearted ditty about the massacre of the Seventh Cavalry at The Little Big Horn.  You've gotta give the writer of that song some credit.  It's not many who can come up with a "fun" song about a military blunder that cost nearly an entire regiment in the midst of a war to subjugate if not eradicate an entire race of people.  The lyrics came complete with the words, “injuns” and “redskins.”  Not sure that would fly these days.  Other number one songs that autumn included; Chubby Checker - The Twist, The Drifters - Save The Last Dance For Me and Ray Charles - Georgia On My Mind.

In the autumn of my fifty-seventh year:  According to Billboard the top five songs are:

                Moves Like Jagger – Maroon Five with Christina Aguilera

                Someone Like you – Adele

                Pumped up Kicks – Foster The People

                Party Rock Anthem – LMFAO

                Stereo Hearts – Gym Class Heroes.

I don’t know, I’m lost here; never heard of, let alone heard any of these folks.  I feel like my dad must have in the autumn of my seventh year.

Premiered October 1960

In the autumn of my seventh year:  The movie Spartacus with Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis premiered.  Also premiering in the month of October was The Alamo with John Wayne as Davy Crockett.

In the autumn of my fifty-seventh year:  According to Rotten Tomatoes this week’s best bet, as autumn gets under way, is Moneyball, a movie about an iconoclast baseball GM.  However in this my fifty-seventh year, I enjoyed Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps with Kirk Douglas’ son, Michael.

In the autumn of my seventh year:  For the most part I related to the music that my mom played; on vinyl of course.  She listened to The Kingston Trio, Harry Belafonte and Peter, Paul and Mary.  When I got into my teens I looked at those artists with disdain.

In the autumn of my fifty-seventh year:  I appreciate the talents of that music my mom loved and I have CDs of Harry Belafonte and The Kingston Trio.  The Trio’s “Tom Dooley” has since been voted to The Library of Congress National Registry of Historically Significant Recordings.  Maybe I wasn’t just a dumb little kid.

In the autumn of my seventh year:  A full course Thanksgiving Dinner at The Velvet Turtle-Sam’s Café cost 4.95.

In the autumn of my fifty-seventh year:  4.95 will get me a pumpkin spice latte.