September 13, 2026

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

The lazy Saturdays of summer in this part of the Northeast are packing up their stage set just as the hints of coming autumn – turning leaves, below 60-degree mornings and yellow school buses – move in. That the scenery of these two seasons use the same space is a benefit against sameness, as are winter and spring, climate change notwithstanding.

In a time long ago but easily recalled in older age, as nature provides that comfort when the memories are good, a lazy Saturday once began for this writer with a walk from my lower New York State hamlet of Hillcrest into Spring Valley, a village where three generations of my family once lived. It was a short-lived ritual for me to head for the South Main Street School, which my father, brother and I attended, taught by many of the same instructors.

When the family moved from the Valley to Hillcrest, just a mile or so, we crossed the Erie tracks that divided the northern and southern sections of the school district. So, at the end of the fourth grade, Craig, my brother, and I were transferred to the North Main Street School.

Having never cottoned to change, I did not immediately take to the new school. I longed for my companions at South Main and for the school’s familiarity. So for a while on those lazy Saturdays and others, I took a walk to South Main to remember and to water my roots.

In time, new friends were found at North Main, teachers too, especially Torger Gram, who by having us write weekly compositions, fired up, without the flame ever going out, an almost lifelong habit of penning something.

Today’s column marks the completion of my 45th year writing The Column Rule, a weekly offering begun in the fall season of 1981. In print, the essays ran in the former Rockland Journal-News out of Nyack, N.Y., until July 2006, when I retired. Without missing a week, it moved online at thecolumnrule.com, set up by my computer-talented son Andrew as a gift.

So, just as lazy Saturdays of summer give way to fall offerings, these essays morphed from print to digital. And that walk to the South Main Street School to keep roots watered became this weekly time on the iPad stringing words together.

I need that, and I beg your indulgence.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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