Wow, here we are in the beginning of November already.

And that means it’s Fountain Festival time. This year’s event is the 39th edition of what began as a small show of 50 artists grouped together in Fountain Park.

The first organizer of the festival was Mary Read. Even she couldn’t have imagined that it would one day have some 500 artists and crafts people lining the Avenue of the Fountains and a large section of Saguaro Boulevard next to Fountain Park.

Incidentally, for the information of anyone new to the community, the art festival draws at least 200,000 people to the community’s downtown during the three-day weekend. The Avenue and that section of Saguaro are closed to traffic at 2 p.m. Thursday. They will be reopened on Monday after all the infrastructure has been removed and streets are cleared of trash.

Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday through Sunday.

After a mid-week cool- down, the forecast is almost ideal for the weekend with highs in the low 80s predicted.

I heard there was a large crowd for another event on the Avenue last Thursday night. These were mostly locals, including many families, enjoying the Halloween in the Hills event.

We intended to go down, but we had a small crisis at home. I dozed off while watching the news waiting for Diane to get home from work. I awoke to find there was no sound coming out of my entertainment center. The crisis arose when we couldn’t figure out how to get the sound back and I had planned to watch the ASU- Washington State football game that night

The universal remote was still in my hand when I woke. I apparently had hit a wrong button or combination of them. My first thought was the mute button. Pushing that did nothing. We got out the original remotes to all the equipment in our center. Diane and I were pushing buttons left and right.

Still, no success.

Diane called out to my 14-year–old grandson, Hunter, “Can you come help grandpa with the TV?”

He came out of his room that looks like a computer store. He checked the wiring hookups and got a little box with a cord coming out of it. He plugged it in to the front of our amplifier, and nearly deafened us for life with the sound that came out of it.

“Well, we know that the amplifier is working,” he said with a smile.

He checked out a few more connections, then turned to us and uttered those dreaded words, “I don’t know, grandpa, I’m sorry.”

Then I called my buddy, Frank, who likes challenges with electronics. He spent his working career fixing computers and business machines.

“Did you try unplugging everything and plugging it back in?

We did that and when the cable box re-booted, magically the sound came back on.

“Frank, you’re a miracle worker,” I said.

I had my sound back and in time for the start of the football game.

And to make the evening complete, the Sun Devils won the game convincingly.

I told that story in case any of you wake up from a nap and suddenly you don’t have sound.

If you remember, try unplugging the cable box first then plug it back in. You could save yourself a lot of time and frustration.