When October Goes

Mom Shanley, Halloween 2024

Right around Halloween, my mom used to bring up Barry Manilow's song "When October Goes," which appears on his album, 2:00 AM Paradise Cafe. This wasn't your typical record of Manilow schmaltz, with key changes in the final chorus of every song, added for dramatic effect. This session featured Barry with jazz heavyweights like Gerry Mulligan (Mom and Pop's fave), Mel Tormé, Sarah Vaughn and a few others. Mom always leaned on me to check it out the album out because of the caliber of players. I would always scoff.

At the end of the tenth month, she thought it was important to play this little ballad that Barry co-wrote with the great Johnny Mercer, "When October Goes." And we were going to listen to it, whether we liked it or not. "Just one tune," was often her line when she wanted to turn us on to some song or artist. It wasn't bad, for a Barry Manilow song, I probably thought. 

But time has a way of changing perspectives.

If you know me or if you've read this blog over the past year and a half, you know that dear Martha, my mom, passed in June of last year. I've been thinking about her a lot lately for a number of reasons. For one, this is my favorite time of year, and not just because my birthday falls in October. There's something about the change in the weather, that in-between temperature, where it's not too chilly but cool enough to pull out a flannel. The fall usually comes with a sense of renewal, thinking back to the days when I was going to Pitt. Each fall brought new adventures (and some radical changes). Years later, I was offered a job at InPgh, my first full-time writing job, on the eve of my birthday.

But the weather also takes me back further to my high school days. I had a paper route and Thursday night was always "collecting night," when I would stop by all my customers' houses to collect their paper money for the week. For some reason, more than summertime, the memory of collecting in the fall stands out in my mind. As my family was finally getting mom's estate closed out in the present time, the weather was changing and I was thinking back to the days of yore. 

For some unrelated reason, thoughts of the past took my mind back to Alice Cooper's School's Out album, which I got for Christmas when I was either in first or second grade. No lie. I was that young. Chances are it was second grade, because I remember getting Killer for Christmas in third grade. (I remember school years better than my age, I guess because of when my birthday falls.) I pretty much wore out that copy of School's Out by playing it on my Mickey Mouse phonograph. When I thought about the album again, it meant I needed to pull it off the shelf and give it a spin. Or three.

I have to give my mom credit because after hearing it played so much, she never gave up the ghost and told me the second half of "Gutter Cat Vs. The Jets" came from West Side Story. Did she even notice? Was she appalled? Or was she cool enough to think that this album was my own thing, and better not to explain it to me. I didn't make the connection until I saw West Side Story on tv a few years later.

The album (which I bought again about 10 years ago) still holds as much magic for me as it did back then, even in some of the lesser parts (the puzzling "Grand Finale" mainly). But one song that struck me even deeper this time is "Alma Mater." Largely acoustic, it's written from the perspective of a character who admits "I finally grew up/ they finally let me outta school," and reminisces with his pals about the old days. As the music fades, Alice is signing off, throwing out cliched lines, "Don't make a stranger of yourself, huh? Remember the Coop." 

Then his voice turns serious as he stutters. "Hey, I hope...I hope you don't... forget me or nothing. Goodbye." That "goodbye" was phrased almost like a question. As a little guy, the pathos in his voice always hit me, the way a sensitive scene on Timmy and Lassie did. I was young enough to think he really meant it, and missed the fact that the bassline that followed it was playing "Happy Trails" probably for comedic effect. Instead, to me, Alice was worried about being left behind. It's been 41 years since I graduated high school and two of best buddies left the planet a few years ago. I just turned 59 and that fall weather brings with it a longing for a past that's not really there anymore. I don't want to live in the past. I guess I just wish parts of the past were still here.

So last night, I pulled out 2:00 AM Paradise Cafe (Mom's copy, that I kept for this very moment) and put on "When October Goes." I should have done it last year, but never got it together. 

Martha was right. It IS a good tune. Mercer's lyrics talk about not only the tenth month passing by, but of memories where "the same dream appears/ and you are in my arms/ to share the happy years." I have to wonder if Mom loved the poetic nature of the song, and Barry's delivery, or if the message resonated with her. (Just so you know, my dad was still alive around the time she was still playing records for us.) 

Like the song, I too hate to see October go. Mainly because I don't like daylight savings to end. But also because of the things that aren't here anymore. 

Rather than end on a very maudlin note, the other October thing I associate with my mom is Helen Hunt Jackson's poem "October's Bright Blue Weather," which she loved and used to read to her students each year while she was teaching. A few days ago, I visited her and Pop in the cemetery, looked up the poem online and read it to both of my folks. I think they approved.