In northeastern USA, fall comes first in the highest reaches
of New England, then creeps on frosty feet down the mountains and high hills, through
the Adirondacks, the Poconos and Great Smoky Mountains, painting them crimson and
gold. It creeps into the valleys as it announces the winter to come,
putting on a glorious show until the leaves dry up and fall off.
Most beautiful of all are the sugar maples, whose broad leaves
display a rainbow of reds and gold. My mid-childhood was spent in Wyoming, New York,
in a valley just north of the Poconos, where the town still has gas lights
and the streets are lined with huge, ancient sugar maples. We would
look for the most gorgeous and perfect maple leaf to take to school, and the teacher
would pin them up on the bulletin board.
One thing was both good and bad - raking the leaves. If there
were children in the house, they were usually the ones assigned this task.
It wasn't just work. First we raked them into "walls", making a huge
house on the front lawn. Out would come the dolls, doll dishes, old
blanket and play kitchen appliances to furnish our home, and we'd play house.
To tell the truth, although I wanted to play with my friends, I was not a real fan
of playing house, and usually would try to play the husband or the dog if the others
would go along with it. Sometimes I persuaded them to play hospital instead,
but rarely. The disadvantage was that each evening we'd have to haul
in all the toys, and by the next afternoon, the wind, new leaf fall and stray dogs
had usually blurred the lines so we had to re-rake.
When we tired of this, there were two other games we played, and I've completely
forgotten the rules or the point. One, we raked the leaves into a huge
circle, the walls like a cut pie. The other we'd rake them into irregularly
placed squares; I think this must have been some variation of hopscotch.
But I'll bet Cynthia MacGregor
can come up with the rules! (Note: Cynthia says not. I'm
pretty sure the squares were hopscotch, and the pie-cut circle some type of tag.
Maybe we invented it. Anyone remember something like this?
Contact us.)
Next, when we tired of our games or the lawn got too messy for our parents' liking,
we raked them all into a huge pile, and took turns running and jumping into the
pile. The boys took part in this, too, scattering the leaves with abandon.
Some households used part of the leaves to bed down rose bushes, spring bulbs and
rhizomes, and other flowering plants, to protect them from the worst of the cold,
and believe me, the winters were long and snowy there! The rest
were raked to a bare spot far from dry shrubs or buildings, or sometimes raked to
the curb, and burned under an adults' supervision. Rarely an autumn passed
but the fire department had to come out at least once and put out a bonfire that
threatened to spread.
I remember afterwards, kicking through the ashes, sometimes finding a scorched doll
dish or other toy that had gotten left behind, and pensively realizing that another
summer had gone away forever.
