It’s little wonder that writer Thomas Wolfe loved the month of October. He grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, a town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, at a time when forests and fields covered the nearby hills and mountains rather than houses and condominiums. October transformed those slopes into a palette of flaming reds and glittering yellows, the orchards yielded apples by the wagonload, and pumpkins were ripe for a cook’s blade and a pie shell.
In his novel “Of Time and the River,” the description-drunken Wolfe celebrated October with a passage of more than 1,200 words, ranging from Maine to Ohio to Carolina. Here’s just a sampling:
