There is some question as to where the practice of providing those condemned to death a “last meal”. Some say it started with the Roman Gladiators. Others claim it began in Greece, well before Christ. Others still say those are wrong, and that it was really a hangman’s meal in the 1700s Germany. Regardless of the origin of the practice the idea is obvious: Let’s give the soon-to-be-dead one last nice thing. If you’re about to be dead, you might as well eat some good food first.
There’s a unique energy to a late October day when the temperature swells to 79° at the lake. When the wind feels more like a breeze and the waves look more like July than they do November, which starts very, very soon. The clean cars are out. The convertibles and the turbos and the collector cars with blue plates, it’s time to drive those cars before you can’t anymore. The leaves are changing. Is it peak? No one can tell. But the sky is blue and the leaves are gold and brown and red and yellow and orange. If you live in the upper Midwest, you know a day such as this has to be seized. Dammit, man, seize it! If you had work to do, it can wait. If you had plans that seemed very important when you made them, 79 degrees and a dose of sun at the end of October tells you they’re not that important. If you didn’t ride your bike very often this summer you have another chance today. So go for a walk and kick some leaves. Drive the car. Ride the bike. Back the boat out of your slip one last time. This glorious fall is almost over, but we’re not dead yet.