Vintage Chicago Tribune: Rites of fall — 5 things to love about autumn that aren’t football

Fall begins Saturday and to us it feels like the most wonderful time of the year.

There’s so much to do in and around Chicago: Apple and pumpkin picking, cider slurping, leaf peeping, enjoying a challenging run with thousands of friends or snuggling with a loved one near the lakefront.

And there’s so much to look forward to: Trick-or-treating, gathering to celebrate Thanksgiving (or Friendsgiving) and, dare we say, bundling up to welcome the first snowfall.

It’s all so exciting that it almost makes us forget that our favorite football team will probably be disappointing for yet another season.

So, get outside and celebrate all fall has to offer. But before you do, grab a pumpkin-spiced donut or coffee and check out these photos pulled from the Tribune’s archives to help set the mood.

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The great outdoors

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People sit on a bench during an autumn day in Lincoln Park on Sept. 23, 1981, in Chicago. (Ernie Cox Jr./Chicago Tribune)

When the leaves start to fall and the temperature turns crisp, Chicago area residents of decades past did the same thing we do now —head outdoors.

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• My son and I went pumpkin picking at 5 new-to-us places near Chicago. Here are our thoughts and tips.

Chicago Marathon

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The first runners cross the Outer Drive Bridge shortly after the start of the Mayor Daley Marathon on Sept. 25, 1977. (Karen Engstrom / Chicago Tribune)

It is a flat, fast course considered one of the world’s six major marathons.

But the Chicago Marathon didn’t start out that way. Heck, the first race wasn’t even 26.2 miles long. Yet, it’s become more inclusive for a variety of people — including wheelchair racers — throughout the decades and has only been canceled twice (due to lack of a sponsor in 1987 and the coronavirus pandemic in 2020).

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Spooky season

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Children participate in the annual Bateman Elementary School Halloween parade in October 1965. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)

What’s neat about Halloween is its ability to offer something for everyone: candy for the sweet-toothed, guts and gore to appease horror enthusiasts, and costumes that can send up peals of laughter or fright, depending on your personal Halloween ethos.

And Chicago, as always, loves an excuse to celebrate and have some fun.

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• Christopher Borrelli: The rise and fall of Halloween trick-or-treating
• Vintage Chicago Tribune: Celebrate spooky season — with a cemetery walk before Halloween
• Honor the dead: Six Chicago tour guides who frequent local cemeteries share their favorite grave sites.
• ‘Dead people always seem to get in the way of the living.’ Facing death with Chicago’s ‘Cemetery Lady’ Helen Sclair.
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• How Day of the Dead is celebrated in Chicago (explained in English and Spanish)
• The scariest town in Illinois does not exist. But you can visit in ‘Halloween Ends.’
• Vintage Chicago Tribune: Will ‘Halloween’ ever really end? How the Tribune reviewed each horror flick in the series.

Thanksgiving

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Turkeys on farms and in cities in Illinois get ready to become Thanksgiving meals. Here, Richard Cozzi, 11, rushes to his home on South Morgan Street in Chicago with a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner in November 1955. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)

Founding father Benjamin Franklin didn’t call for the turkey to be the national emblem, but he did extol the virtues of turkeys as “more respectable” than eagles, a “true original native of America,” and a “bird of courage.”

There are six subspecies of turkeys, with those in Illinois typically being eastern turkeys.

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• How to keep politics off the table at Thanksgiving

Colder weather

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Commuters standing on an elevated platform at Pulaski Road meet the cold as icy Arctic air sent Chicago area temperatures down to 1 below zero in January 1982. (Carl Hugare / Chicago Tribune)

The Windy City has seen its fair share of chilly days — we have the photos to prove it.

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• Tom Skilling Q&A: WGN-TV’s chief meteorologist on ‘barbaric’ cold and snowy weather from the city’s past
• Here’s when Chicago received its first snow of the fall season, going back more than 135 years
• Chicago weather: How our 2022-23 seasonal snowfall compares with previous winters

Want more vintage Chicago?

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• And, catch me Monday mornings on WLS-AM’s “The Steve Cochran Show” for a look at “This week in Chicago history.”

Thanks for reading!

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Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Ron Grossman and Marianne Mather at rgrossman@chicagotribune.com and mmather@chicagotribune.com.