Vivid pinks, greens and Dodger blue mark the joy of October in Southern California
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This year, as it often does, our Southern California autumn began hot. Early October was no joke, with temperatures above 100 here in Riverside. But all I heard from friends and neighbors on evening walks was, “I love October! Halloween is coming! And we’ve got the Dodgers!”
Everyone knows what people think about California — that we have no seasons here, especially no fall, no vivid foliage, no harvest festivals. But they don’t understand the brilliant, intense and colorful season that is October.
The colors are astonishing. Brochures always feature the same palm trees, but in October, it’s the big silk floss trees with their bright green trunks that burst into bloom with huge neon pink flowers, Seussian in their cartoonish loveliness. Mine is the queen of the neighborhood, visible for blocks at 40 feet tall and filled with hummingbirds flashing red and green as they fight for nectar. Along the freeways, sunflowers bloom with golden intensity in counterpoint to the fall bougainvillea, tumbling down walls and fences, bursting like fireworks — magenta, peach, gold, pale pink.
A California garden grows in a parking strip, where poppies nod into the bike lane, brushed back by roaring Harleys and pickups.
The silk floss trees and bougainvillea are not indigenous; they’re from South America, but they flourish here. When I walk to the end of my block and onto the Santa Ana River trails, native California takes over and makes autumn feel like home. Cottonwoods shimmer pale green and gold, willows fade to yellow, and my favorite tree, the sycamore, glows in the late afternoon heat, leaves big as dinner plates, a beautiful ochre.
Of course, the most important color this fall is blue — Dodger blue. Flags are everywhere on my block, but not the Mexican Dodger flag the Soria family next door usually puts up, because we’re all superstitious and too much hope might jinx everything. They all — five kids, two parents and a grandparent — decided not to wear their jerseys during the playoff games but their Virgin of Guadalupe was hung near the big-screen TV. They have a new pit bull puppy — named Dodger.
Across the street, another neighbor frequently has Dodger watch parties on the outdoor screen in his yard. In the division series against the Padres, when it was still over 100 degrees, we were all nervous. When Shohei, Mookie, Teoscar or Max hit a home run, we could hear screaming up and down the block.
The Dodgers are in my blood. My mother, from Switzerland, came to Fontana and then Riverside when she was 19. She carried a transistor radio with her everywhere while she listened to the Dodgers, learning to speak English from Vin Scully. She was pregnant with me in October 1960 when the team finished fourth in the National League, but I’m sure that from the womb, I heard her cheering. The Dodgers won World Series pennants in 1963 and 1965 — those I remember, but only as the sound of constant applause on the radio. I grew up surrounded by adults who listened to transistor radios — in their shirt pockets, like my father, father-in-law and my mother, who carried hers around and propped it in the yard while we weeded the vegetables.
This fall, my mother and I listen together on my car radio while I take her places. She is 89 and she has dementia. She can’t name all the players, but her joy right now is Shohei Ohtani. “He’s an immigrant, like me!” she said, tears streaming down her face when he hit his record-breaking home run in September.
What unfolded at loanDepot Park on Thursday transcended what many thought ever possible in the sport — even for someone like Shohei Ohtani.
My mom loved Fernando Valenzuela too, loved that he’d come to California for his dreams. When he died Tuesday, I remembered watching him with her and the rest of my family, that high leg kick and huge grin that helped the Dodgers beat the Yankees in October of 1981, something we hopefully will repeat this time.
This Blue October has been great. My letter carrier listens on his Bluetooth. He lives in San Jacinto and has driven to San Diego to pick up his girlfriend before driving to Dodger Stadium for a game; afterward it’s back to San Diego, then San Jacinto, nearly 300 miles in all. I ran into a man at Ralph’s who told me he grew up in El Monte. His dad came home from work in the summer, he’d shower, fill a thermos with coffee, and drive the family to Dodger Stadium where his father would listen to the game on the radio in the stands, filling out his scorecard. That’s exactly what I remember from all those years going to games with my parents: the five of us kids with our Cracker Jacks, me looking down the rows at hands gripping radios like talismans.
‘SNL’ had it right. California’s a big state and we think nothing of driving it — and obsessing over which routes to take — end to end.
On Sunday, when the Dodgers beat the Mets to advance to the World Series, I was next door with the Sorias, bearing good luck cookies, holding the baby on my lap while we all screamed. And on Friday, all the best parts of October will light up Southern California. Halloween and Dia de los Muertos decorations will glow in the night, scarlet bougainvillea blooms will swirl along the sidewalks, and the Dodgers will play the Yankees.
I will be too nervous to watch, so as I have all fall I will turn on AM 570: Home of Dodgers Radio on my phone, slide it into the pocket of my cargo pants and walk the dog around the neighborhood, listening like my forebears who heard voices calling the games from their pockets, or clutched hands at games, or on porches and patios in October — if we were lucky. At my feet will be the first fallen leaves of the sycamores, their veined centers holding the hot sunset, as they have since the beginning of time, in autumn.
Susan Straight’s latest novel is “Mecca.” Her new novel, “Sacrament,” will be published in October 2025. She is a contributing writer to Opinion.
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