Hot Air Balloons
Fall has begun, crisp out there and even though it is warm as a robin’s nest it feels like the beginning of fall that impending feeling hanging poised in the air like a fleet of hot air balloons motionless in the sky. I took in the hoses and the wheelbarrow and mowed the lawn and cut a couple logs for firewood, and wondered how much longer the flowers would linger before giving up their colors to the long dark winter.
Interior of the Living Room of the Rookwood Inn
In the rustic Victorian living room of the Rookwood Inn, among the antique bookshelves stuffed with musty crumbling books, lacy curtains, dusty plants, and French-patterned furniture, my wife is explaining to Amy, another of the guests (a pretty mother of four with frizzy hair and long legs), about our sightseeing yesterday in nearby Amherst, when Amy responds, “Oh, I know Emily Dickinson, she’s the one who wrote all those novels about little women and the such,” and I’m so astounded I almost fall off my chair.
• Mike Estabrook lives in New England and says of himself “I'm the marketing communications manager for a tiny division of a gigantic company, and man, going into an office every day can be excruciating. I should’ve stayed on Northfield Avenue instead where I belong and learned to fix cars like my Daddy did.”
