On a recent orange evening as the sun sank and red leaves dropped from the dogwood, I stood in the backyard, grilling bratwurst, racing daylight.
Darkness sneaks up on backyard grillers these days.
A few weeks ago we could cook in daylight as late as 8 o'clock. Now the sun disappears around 7.
Yesterday the season officially changed to fall as the sun crossed the equator. It was the autumnal equinox, when the hours of day and night were approximately equal. That balance won't last long; the night is gaining.
That means those of us who insist on grilling will soon find ourselves searching for flashlights.
Still, the fall, with its mild temperatures and smoky aromas, is a great time to start fires in the backyard. Each autumn, I cook pork sausage. I am not sure where this urge to consume pork comes from. I would like to think it emerged from some link to the nation's rural rhythms.
The fall was once the time that farmers sent their pigs to slaughter, with some of the meat ending up as sausage.
In the Missouri town where I grew up, a job in the city's sprawling stockyards driving pigs into the packing plants was considered prized work for teenage boys.
I never landed one of those jobs, but one of my best friends did. And on summer nights, he would regale his pals with tales from happenings at "the yards." From him, we learned that pigs were both smart and tough, with tusks that could gouge a stockman's leg.
Sometimes we were so bored that we would drive to the south end of town on Sunday evenings and watch farmers unload pigs and other livestock from their trucks into the stockyard's tall wooden pens for the Monday market.
Nowadays my only contact with pigs is at the meat counter. I am grateful for the pleasures that good pork delivers, especially in the fall.
Apparently, I am not the only one who felt this seasonal urge to eat pork. The other day as the autumnal equinox loomed, Binkert's Meats in the 8800 block of Philadelphia Road in Rosedale was doing a brisk business selling sausages.
Binkert's make authentic German sausages. Egon Binkert, the founder of the operation who is now retired, used to say he made sausages from "everything but the squeak of the pig." Binkert's daughter Sonya Weber, and her husband, Lothar Weber, have continued the sausage-making tradition.
Their shop is the last German sausage-maker in a town that prior to World War I had such a large German population that the notes of City Council meetings were printed in English and German.
