On a cool, crisp Saturday,

salted in-the-shell peanuts

came to mind.  He thought

about cracking them, eating

the salty nut and tossing the

shell into the dune grass as

he sat on a chair on the front

porch while taking in the

golden foliage of a mid-fall

day in his cottage near the

Big Lake. Unfortunately,

the peanuts were stale so

the remainder of the bag

was tossed into the front

yard to mingle with the

maple leaves for the chip-

munks and until spring

when they will be ground-

up and carried away once

a year with the cut dune grass.

He went back to watching the

University of Michigan/ Michigan

State game on T.V. and dug

into the remainder of the bag

of relatively fresh pistachios.

Filling a bowl with shells and

a few nuts he couldn’t crack,

he opened the front door and

tossed the bowl-full into the

dune grass for the mice

while a neighbor blew recently

fallen leaves off his recently

mown grass with a really noisy

gas driven leaf blower. Not

wanting to suck in the pollution

or listen to the roar, he closed

the door and went back to

the game. Michigan State

had the lead.