Don’t Mourn the Passing of Summer When This is Next

As a kid, I dreaded the first day of September. Even though my birthday comes at the end of the month, I never looked ahead to that, I was too busy lamenting the end of summer and the beginning of school. My dad felt differently.

Fall was my dad's favorite season. Mostly, he would joke, because it meant I was going back to school (I swear I heard my parents clinking glasses together in celebration of that). Really though, it was (for him) the beautiful fall colors that exploded in abundance around our home in Oregon, Illinois that made him happy.

We were once looking at a brochure for a "New England Fall Colors Trip," when he scoffed, and wondered aloud why any "fool would pay good money to travel out east to see the leaves change when we've got the most beautiful fall scenery anywhere in the country." He said he would take "the ride down Route 2 from Rockford all the way to Dixon and beyond (a saying made famous by Buzz Lightyear, I believe) over anything they've got out east, or west either."

Watching this video made me think of my dad, who's been gone for seven years now. In some great camera and editing work, Red Truck Studios shows exactly what my dad was talking about...and why I stopped lamenting the end of summer and the coming of fall.