I’ll admit that much of my love for fall is tied up in nostalgia, in memories that I will never relive again. Gone are the piles of elm leaves raked into the street and set ablaze, into which we kids would toss apples and potatoes, and then rake them from the ashes to eat, charred husks and all. I think that fragrant, savory memory is why I still like to toast bagels and English muffins almost black, until the smoke alarm threatens to squawk.

Although I hadn’t ridden a bike through most of my adulthood, pretty much every morning for the past couple years I take a ten-ortwelve-mile jaunt into the countryside, where I converse with the corn and cows if they’re in the mood to listen. Whatever trials await me later, I always find a sense of peace peddling the pavement at the start of the day.

That’s what my son called it when he phoned me to ask: “How you doin’ against the ‘vid?”

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked him — three times — what he said: “Are you saying ‘vid’? What the hell is a ‘vid’?” Something in the corner of my mind hinted that it might be a term having to do with gambling, but I hadn’t placed any bets lately. Or at least I didn’t remember if I had.

I freely confess that I’m an idiot, but I’m not stupid. My bike has flashing lights fore and aft, I wear a red helmet and sunglasses, and I’m dressed in either orange, yellow, or fluorescent green.

While other birds are beautiful in some gaudy, outlandish way — like cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, or even robins — the tiny wren’s beauty lies in its simple, classical, dappled brown look, like a tiny refined Englishman in a tweed suit.

I started, of course, by saying goodbye to colleagues — teachers, secretaries, custodians, counselors, and even a few administrators — but then I bid farewell to the places and things I would miss.

Still, if you’re a Sun City Illinoisan who was looking forward to getting reacquainted with those long-awaited love-bugs, this year of the dragon has been a bit of a drag, because there hasn’t been a cicada in sight in our part of the world.

OK, that might not be the best way to begin this. Let me start again.

But as the 18th Century Scottish poet Robert Burns famously wrote: “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

Well, that’s not exactly how he said it. In the words of his place and time, it was: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!”

Quirky? Twisted? Wonky?

Nope. Let’s go with askew. I can live with askew.

That’s because their favorite resting spot, the old purple cherry plum tree in my yard, is gone. It blew down on one of those blustery days in late April, just before the hummers got back in town.

For the record, the show today is way better than it was at the beginning, 22 years ago. Back then, the main focus was on delusional dreamers who had no idea how bad they were, and the only reason to watch the early episodes was to find someone to laugh about at the water cooler the next day. It was a guilty pleasure back then, too, I guess, especially if you found pleasure in cruel ridicule.

That’s because the long-awaited 17-year cicadas are clearing their throats underground just beneath the trees right now, and soon the branches above will ring with their robust songs. And every other time in my life that they’ve come to visit—four times in total before this time — they somehow found a way into my mouth.

Mom earned a high school diploma from Leyden High School, but Dad left school at 14 to get a job to help support his family during the Great Depression. Had it not been for such hard economic times, he would have earned his high school diploma, too.

That’s because our government a century ago felt that education was important enough to guarantee that young people have the right to be educated through high school, funded by taxpayers.

I know that’s not the kind of confession you expect to hear every day, but there it is:

Today, I lost a ham.

“How does someone lose a ham?” my friend Anne asked when I told her.

For me it was a nightmare.

Unfortunately, many newly enacted laws in places like Texas, Florida and Missouri misinterpret that advice and take it to unhealthy extremes.

“What was the cause of the Civil War?” she was asked.

And rather than giving the answer that any ten-year-old American could give, she opted instead for nuance.

“Probably four or five years,” I said. “I refill it in case I get thirsty through the night.”

But for me, it’s cookies.

The first was the memory of a powerful passage from a novel by Elie Wiesel, in which a man is waiting to execute a political prisoner who has been sentenced to die at sunset. He says you know night has arrived when you’re gazing out a window in the evening and you suddenly realize that you’re looking at your reflection in the darkening glass instead of the landscape outside.

It would be a stretch to call me a luddite, but it’s fair to say I’m luddite-adjacent.

And when a boy named Jim said his hero was Jean-Claude Van Damme, I asked him why.

It’s like that with me whenever I hear the name of Chicago Bears middle linebacker Dick Butkus — “the most feared tackler of all time” according to the NFL Network — who passed away two weeks ago on October 5.

Oh, sometimes we choose our demographics willingly, if unconsciously. If you watch a lot of Duck Dynasty, you’re probably glad to see ads for camouflage outdoor wear. Watch a lot of Golden Girls reruns, and you’ll find the best prices for hearing aids and hemorrhoid cream.

Early every morning, weather permitting, I ride out of Sun City southward along Sandwald Road all the way to Timber Creek and back, a roundtrip of a bit more than seven miles that lasts me the better part of an hour. I wish it were longer, but that’s as far as I can go in the countryside without too great a risk of being squashed like a bug by a truck or car.