It’s October, after all
Trump’s reversal on S.F. immigration surge shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s October, after all
San Francisco Chronicle
By Carl Nolte, Contributor Oct 25, 2025
Mayor Daniel Lurie’s cellphone rang a few nights ago. President Donald Trump was on the line, and after some discussion he agreed not to send federal forces to clean up what he’d called the mess in San Francisco. Talk about an October surprise!
That’s what I like about what the poets call “old October.” You never know what’s going to happen. October has both a bit of autumnal sadness mixed with a touch of spring optimism. And nearly every time something different.
Professional politicians are always wary of the days just before the November election when some event that could affect the election would happen — too late for a candidate to mount a response. Way back in 1980, William Casey, Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager, called it the “October Surprise.”
I think it’s the season. The political ground shifts a bit in October. You can always tell by then who is going to win and who is going to lose.
It’s not just the campaign rallies and the clever TV ads. It’s the shorter days, the dark mornings and the early sunsets that make people realize it is time to make up their minds. Time is moving on. You can feel it in the air. “All things on earth point home in old October,” Thomas Wolfe wrote.
I had a friend who told me over a drink one October day he was quitting his longtime job. “Why?” I asked. “It’s time,” he said.
Other people think October is the best of times, especially in sports. The best time, I’ve been told. Basketball is just starting up, football is in mid-stride, and October is the World Series, the Fall Classic. You will remember Reggie Jackson, the clutch hitter, “Mr. October” himself.
I was lucky enough one year to see an October moment myself. I had been assigned a bit out of my league, to cover baseball, and was at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. It was the 1988 World Series, Dodgers vs. the Oakland Athletics, bottom of the ninth, two out. Dennis Eckersley, pitching for Oakland against Kirk Gibson, a surprise pinch hitter who was injured.
I remember the view from the stands: a night game; everything in the stands in shadow, the field all green, like the Emerald City in the “Wizard of Oz.” Gibson limped a bit at the plate, worked the count to three balls, two strikes. He was down to his last strike. Eckersley threw his last pitch. Gibson hit it over the fence. Vin Scully described it on TV: “The impossible has happened.”
But the real impossible happened the next year, on Oct. 17, 1989, at Candlestick Park. Oakland was playing San Francisco this time, in the World Series. It had never happened before and will never happen again.
Maybe you were there that day, waiting for the game to start on that beautiful fall day. And then … an earthquake, the biggest in years. What were the odds of that? Only in October.
Mother Nature can turn on you in October. In the past few years October has been fire season with deadly wildfires. One of the worst was on Oct. 19, 1991, when a grass fire in the Berkeley hills set off a firestorm: 25 people died and nearly 3,000 home and apartment buildings were destroyed, a reminder that even a beautiful season can be a killer.
So it’s a mixture, a season for all seasons.
During another October some friends and I were camping on the north rim of Yosemite Valley, and at the end of the day we saw the fading sunset light the face of Half Dome just as a full moon rose, a sight I am still unable to describe properly.
There is something else this October — two green comets named Swan and Lemon are supposed to be visible in the western sky not long after sunset. They won’t be back for another thousand Octobers.
We had a touch of rain this month, a bit unusual for the season. I was checking the backyard to see if the rain had an effect and noticed that tiny green shoots of grass had sprung up, produced by a combination of rain and warm sun. So October is not just the end of a season but the start of a new one. A real October surprise.
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Carl Nolte is a fourth generation San Franciscan who has been with The Chronicle since 1961. He stepped back from daily journalism in 2019 after a long career as an editor and reporter including service as a war correspondent. He now writes a Sunday column, “Native Son.” He won several awards, including a distinguished career award from the Society of Professional Journalists, a maritime heritage award from the San Francisco Maritime Park Association, and holds honorary degrees from the University of San Francisco and the California State University Maritime Academy.