I defer to the prior notions of Robert Frost. He did have a point. After all, what is so rare as a day in June ?

This particular month, however, October has been as heavenly as Heaven gets… I am compelled to surmise.

I sit here at the writer’s perch and luxuriate in all that is perfect. The temperature, the grass still glowing green, Bass jumping in the pond, leaves just starting to turn and two gorgeous horses just galloped by.

Adding to the perfection is the stillness. Other than those hoof beats, I’ve barely heard anything, thanks to the tranquility that reigns the day.

Indeed, what is so rare as a day in October ? Now, if ever, come perfect days.

Got that ? Then say it three times fast !

Then let me backup. This convoluted combination of vowels and consonants is a sophisticated way of saying Borax. Got that?

Let me backup further. Surely you remember a Western t.v. series, Death Valley Days, that ran from 1952 to 1970.

What’s that you say ? You weren’t born yet ? Oh well, in 1952 I wasn’t either, so we’re in the same boat.

Be that as it may, the TV series was a chronicle of legends and lore stemming from Death Valley country in southeastern California. The late Merle Haggard used to narrate the re-runs years ago.

The show was sponsored by Twenty Mule Team Borax, a supposedly miraculous and all-purpose cleaning product.

I’m hoping to have this straight: Borax is produced from boron which is or was mined in Death Valley. In the old days, wagons full of the stuff were drawn from the depths of the valley by a… drumroll, please… a team of twenty mules.

Between you, me and the hitching post I can barely imagine harnessing twenty mules. Not to mention, at the end of the day, unharnessing twenty mules. If, dear reader, you have ever harnessed one mule -or horse- you will know why I say that.

Now where was I going with this ? Oh yeah. While I was paging through my Amazon catalog, I just thought I’d check with my comrades to be sure that you all were well-stocked with Twenty Mule Team Borax.

I hate running out of a “must-have” item.

It wasn’t unexpected. Eight or ten nearby neighbors in Alexandria Township, all close friends enjoying a night of cards. Raucous? Absolutely! The festivities accompanied by intermittent cocktails, almost needless to say. Great dinner prepared by the hosts.

We do this intermittently, as long as we’ve been able to recover from the gut-splitting laughter of the occasion before this one. Yes, there are some funny things said, nothing off-color, of course.

The hosts house is charming, surreal at the same time. Constructed in +-1830, one immediately would love to eavesdrop on the domestic conversation of the day. What might they have been talking about? There are clues.

The fireplace, large enough for a standing crouch, has a swinging bracket upon which hangs a huge iron cooking pot. If the cook of the house couldn’t get a stew going in there, where would he.

Or, maybe they talked politics in the house. Andrew Jackson had just been elected President. Major General Jackson was a divisive character. Owner of multiple slaves, he survived an impeachment trial, but the Senate didn’t convict him. At least he provided plenty of juicy controversy for folks to banter about.

I can’t help the effects that a house like this has on me. How can one avoid imaginings of those times. Here’s hoping that mine are reasonably accurate.

But I digress. We were there to play cards, a game called Pass the Ace. The Ace is the anathema to your hand. Be rid of it, no matter the cost.

Minimal money is won or lost in the game, that is the way we play it. Sufficient only to hear the occasional comment from one of the players, wondering how they will now feed their family, what with the pummeling they just took !

The above headline caused a troublesome surge of traffic on the World Wide Web. Servers as distant as Shanghai were momentarily incapacitated by the overwhelming extent of web traffic.

Then things finally settled down. A long-established reality calmed the world: I and a few others have been Mets fans since 1962 ! They do still exist and, Lord have mercy, I’ve been one of them for years now .

It went something like this: All through my childhood and well before that, everyone was a Yankee fan. Eventually, that grew wearisome to me. Yankees, Yankees. Yankees! Wasn’t anyone here in mid-north Jersey up for a little change of pace?

I was ! Why not route for the newcomer in Major League Baseball? Seven years later they won a World Championship. HELLO!

No, in that department they haven’t kept pace with the Yankees, but who has ? And, no, it hasn’t always been smooth. One memorable instance, I believe in ’64, was when Manager Casey Stengel exclaimed in the Mets dugout, “Can’t anybody here play baseball?” Was that, perhaps, a low point in the history of the franchise ?

I hope that all of my readers are happy. I’ve poked the requisite fun at the Mets, but sorry, such fun has been water off a duck’s back for 58 years now. It’s not all that hysterical anymore!

To my satisfaction, they are a quite legitimate contender in pro baseball.

It was a big deal, the signing, that is, of the Garden State Preservation Trust Act. For the first time in America’s history a stable, ongoing source of funding was established for the preservation of farmland.

The state legislation was signed in 1999 by then Governor Christine Todd Whitman.

Where was it signed ? Next door, at the farm contiguous to Tuckaway, that of neighbors Karen Swift and her late husband, Harry.

That’s right. Over the brook and through the woods, there was a very colorful signing ceremony. It started with local dignitary/auto mechanic, the now late Jake Rick, driving down the Swift lane with the Governor in the passenger seat of Jake’s 1914, chain-driven Studebaker ! That’s the way it’s done it here in the country !

Christy Whitman is a very distinguished-looking woman. Fathom the scene as she walked in her Escada-looking dress and high heels, through the cow-pattied barnyard on her way to documents awaiting her signature.

Could the scene have been more appropriately choreographed ? Why shouldn’t it have been? This was all about farming, you know.

Since signing of the bill, the program has been quite successful. At the time of this writing, 233,751 acres of farmland are preserved in Jersey.

In our Alexandria Township alone, we’ve preserved 3200 acres of farmland, roughly half of the tillable ground in the township. A bunch more is in the pipeline.

It is safe to say that the construction of new houses in the state has been substantially quelled by the preservation of farmland. That’s fine by me. Sorry, builders !

I’ve just spent the bulk of the day in an infusion room.

I knew you’d ask what that is.

Well, it’s what it sounds like. A handful of people, all battling MS, sit in a room with intravenous needles dripping meds in their arms for a couple of hours. What fun !

Each of these folks have another thing in common. Some were diagnosed a while ago. Me, in 1983, but none of them really know just how effective this med is. The Docs and the drug companies are getting a bead on it, but it’s still a bit of a crap shoot.

One thing, however, is for sure. Some of the patients in this room are in a lot worse shape than I am, and I entered the room in a wheelchair! In fact, this infusion room is my consistent reminder of how well I’m doing… relatively, that is.

What is the old lyric ?

You’ve got to accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative.

What’s with this place ? Beach Haven, N.J. It hadn’t even rained yesterday or today but last night the streets were a bit water bound. Supertide, the natives were calling it, the effects of a distant tropical storm on the tides. It sounds plausible to me, but what do I know?

Spartans that we all are, our plan was to go to dinner. The five in our intrepid party, despite rivulets in the streets, piled into our Silverado 2500 Pick-up and ventured to the restaurant where our reservation awaited.

Hmm. Maybe this water was a bit more serious than we had perceived. Some of the streets didn’t just have some water ; they were rivers !

Many shops were dark, closed due to conditions.

Our reservation proved to be moot. The place was about to close upon our arrival. Strike one.

One of us made a lucid suggestion. Rather than hunting down another restaurant, maybe we should head back to our rental unit, eat leftovers and hunker down for the night.

Water in the streets was getting deeper and flowing rapidly. I guessed it to be nearly a foot deep in spots. Fortunately the truck is well elevated.

Still in a jovial mood, I intoned a little Johnny Cash.

“How high’s the water, Momma ?”

At length, we anchored at another restaurant and waded in. Yes, they would have us. Our dinners were all excellent, albeit with soggy feet. We even stumbled upon a Hunterdon County pal who has a place here.

Now stuffed and a little cocktail toasted, we emerged from dinner and immediately perceived added depth to the water, now flowing briskly down most streets. It was definitely time to get home !

We proceeded at a necessarily slower pace. Strike two.

“She said it’s two feet high and risin”, I continued to intone.

Driving in water like this is unnerving. Is one always sure what they’re driving over ?

My buddy, Niles, was driving. He was unflappable.

Alas, we finally made it back. It required a monumental effort to move from the truck, to the wheelchair, to the stairs, and to the door and into the house, all without re-drenching my feet.

Was this just another Friday night in Beach Haven? That would be understated !

Yes, some may think me to be a simple soul. After all, I come to this same place every year, and am mesmerized at this same spot habitually.

White caps splay rhythmically on the Jersey shore sand, in immutable attempt to render sleep to anyone who would dare recline. Ah, the Atlantic Ocean; the magic of ever-undulating waves.

When was it that Man was first drawn to the sea ? Wait a minute. Man came from the sea, did he not ?

I am watching the major league baseball divisional playoff series. The battles for National League and American League pennants are, this evening, at a fevered pitch.

No, not all of you are fans, I understand. So, indulge me for a moment, if you would. You know that I would reciprocate if you were a professional Tiddlywinks fan.

It is, after all early October. Baseball at its best is oozing all over the nation. Just tonight, cities represented by teams in the playoffs are New York, Washington D.C., the twin cities of Minnesota, Houston, Tampa Bay, Atlanta and St. Louis.

If you are a fan, have you noticed the bearded player phenomenon of late ? Wait a minute. How could you not have noticed ? It’s almost a competition in and of itself. There was one tonight who almost looks to be staged with such an outlandish-looking beard.

It is a bit of a distraction. Who sits down to watch tonight’s game and expects to see, there in the on deck circle, Grizzly Adams or, better yet, John, Liver-Eating Johnson ? Are they swinging baseball bats or common, ordinary clubs ?

Distraction, did I say ? Well, witness the fact that here I am writing about this phenomenon and not Luis Severino’s wicked slider.

The Yankees won, by the way.

It was an admittedly odd thing to do at 7:30 this morning. If you’ve driven by lately, you’ll know that removal work is well underway. That is the destruction and disposal and of the old Milford paper mill.

Built in 1908, it was one of three or four paper mills in our vicinity manufacturing specialty papers primarily for the food industry. The abandoned Milford mill was the “attraction” this morning as two chimney-like stacks, one 245 feet tall, were slated for destruction.

Just how do they go about that ? No, not with hammer and chisel, not with sledgehammers.

That’s right. With explosives and the push of a button. 40 or 50 folks sat in the fire house a mile or so distant and watched streaming video. Once the towers started to topple, it took four or five seconds for the structures to hit the ground . Structures that were a landmark for many years.

Hey, what can I tell ya ? It’s what we do for entertainment around here !

Not to make light of the matter, though. This mill was mainstay employment for many families for many years. Occasionally I’d compare notes with school buddies on what our Dads did for work.

How often would I hear, “Oh, he works at the mill.”

It was never a question which mill.

As a kid, I think I was glad that my Dad didn’t work in the mill. But, wait a minute. Kids whose Dads worked in the mill didn’t have to milk cows every day. Maybe the grass wasn’t always greener.