Erskine falls doubly in love with fall. (photo by Chris Erskine)

Fall? Make mine a double. 

Double the tailgates. Double the pumpkins on the porch. 

Double the time I go kicking through the sycamore leaves – if I can find enough sycamore leaves. How about pinecones? Who doesn’t love pinecones? 

Double my childhood memories of pumpkin patches, and corn stalks lashed together in frosted fields. 

Double the go-ahead touchdowns. Double the goo in my pumpkin-spiced latte. 

Double the chowders, the chilis, the stews. 

Double the moody mornings, the cotton in the canyons, the log fires … and those orange berries that show up every year on the bushes. 

Double the kids’ costumes, double the dads pulling wagons full of toddlers. 

Double the migrating geese. 

Double the crewneck cardigans you pull from deep in the closet, so far in that you can’t even see. Don’t forget the goofy slippers everybody mocks. Be sure to grab that fleece vest you’ve had forever. 

Double the heavy socks and that old pair of boots you’ve kept for country-road hikes. 

Double the old Van Morrison albums you put on the turntable on rainy nights. 

Double the times we get to “bend with apples and the moss’d cottage-trees” (as per Keats). 

Each fall, America is reborn. It’s in the way we walk, the way our kids chase the soccer ball across scruffy schoolyard fields. It’s in the way the parents take down the goals. 

It’s in the way we huddle up in steamy-windowed coffee houses, book stores and saloons. 

May I recommend Tam O’Shanter, in the bosom of our fair hamlet, on a moonlit night. Solid old place. Smells like lumberyards and pirate ships. Feels like Scotland. Shot and a beer, $10. Seriously, 10 bucks. 

Skooooooooooooal!!! 

“Man has broke the fellowship, with murder, lust and greed,” warned Margaret Atwood. 

Oh relax, Mags. 

See, when life is rocky, you can become a connoisseur of the small psychic pleasures that make your fingers tremble a little less. You seek sustenance in the ethereal, ghostly pleasures of an American fall. 

Autumn is the time your morning coffee tastes better than ever. 

Autumn is the clink of cocktail glasses, summoning the holidays. Ping! 

Autumn is tailgate chefs, in a cloud of wood smoke, pulling ribs, brats and burgers off the grill. 

Autumn is stacking the firewood and cleaning the gutters before the first major storm. 

So, double our Octobers. Double the way a burning candle leans into a jack-o-lantern, scenting it like pie. 

Double the playoff baseball games, the college mascots, the cheerleaders torpedoing into the sky. 

Hey, where’d she go?!!! 

Double my whisky, double my oysters, double my books. 

“For as long as she could remember, she had thought that autumn air went well with books, that the two both somehow belonged with blankets, comfortable armchairs, and big cups of coffee or tea,” wrote Swedish author Katarina Bivald, 

When you’re done doubling my books, please double the rack of ribs, or the grilled pork loin, with a side of applesauce. 

Hell, double the applesauce. Why not? 

Before we tackle another great autumn, I wanted to share something I learned the other day from a reader, in response to a recent piece on Musso & Frank. 

“Think pork chops are tricky to grill and remain moist?” asked David Whittaker. “We can thank pork producers for breeding most of the fat within the muscle tissue out of today’s American Yorkshire pigs, the primary breed that’s found in supermarkets…” 

David goes on to say that the Heritage brand (found at Huntington meats) is Kurobuta pork, and it’s consistently juicier. 

“Pro tip: Don’t grill it – braise it, David says. “Sear one side in a hot oven-proof pan for 3-5 minutes (depending on thickness), flip, pour in a modest slug of white wine, pop the pan in a 350-400F oven, and just leave it for 6-8 minutes (max) – use an instant-read meat thermometer to make sure you don’t shoot past 145F. “ 

Is that more than I ever wanted to know about pork chops? 

Strangely, no. 

Because fall is a possessed and obsessive season. Fall is about the things that frighten us, then make us whole. 

Like when we were 10. 

Fall is the season of Poe. It’s the season of plaid blankets that match your ruddy cheeks. 

It’s the season of kids scampering down the sidewalks, with pillowcases fat with Snickers. 

’Tis the season, all right. 

Summer-to-fall is the best chord change I know.