The hundred-year-old pecan, oak, and cedar trees in my historic Junius Heights neighborhood were showing off some subtle yellow edges one evening in early October. Could it be due, I thought, to the turn of the year every Texan welcomes after the long slog of summer? Or perhaps it was merely because Dallas had received only an inch of rain in the past six weeks.

It was 85 degrees. My neighbor was making a bonfire as the sun began to set. “Getting into the fall spirit?” I asked him, noticing small beads of sweat on his brow. “Tryna,” he answered, looking for kindling among the dead twigs and branches lying on the ground—from a change of season or a drought, again, who’s to say.

I can’t judge my overeager neighbor. He is not alone in neighborhoods across Texas with inflatable Halloween dec

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