When I was a small girl growing up in Illinois we had a very large yard with lots and lots of big trees. In the Fall the yard would be full of fallen leaves. It was a family affair for all of us to help rake leaves. We'd work part of the day raking huge piles of leaves in the yard. Then my sweet daddy would let my sister and I (and any neighborhood kids) play in the leaves. What a time we'd have making tunnels in the piles, running and jumping in them, building forts and having pretend wars.
After we were all done playing Daddy would have to start raking again! But he never complained about it -- he enjoyed seeing us have so much fun. Then, as it would come on late afternoon, the leaves got moved to the ditch by our house to be burned. How much fun that was! Daddy would start the fires and then we'd ride our bikes in the street through the smoke. The smell of burning leaves was wonderful!
There are so few places that will let you burn leaves anymore. Too worried about air pollution or some such thing. Six years ago I made a trip back home in October. It had been many years since I'd been home in the Fall. I was driving through the little town I grew up in and smelled this very familiar scent. Someone was actually burning leaves! I had to drive down the street until I could find where they were burning. The sight and the smell brought back a wonderful flood of childhood memories!
4 comments:
What a lovely memory!
Deb
Fall and the burning of the leaves brings back fond memories when my girls were little and we would do that very thing here and at Roger's mom and dads house, we would always have a leaf raking party or contest and then the kids would jump and play in the leaves and the most fun was when dad would haul the leaves and the girls in the wheel barrow and the kids would laugh with glee. Thanks for waking that memory up. Florence
Kay I did not get to take any more photos but it was a great sale, I saw Cheryl (Voondi) she was in it with her vintage treasures.
Kay, Thanks for sharing these sweet leaf raking memories! It reminded me of so many fun childhood days playing in the leaves. Such a wonderful fall smell. Isn't if funny how smells so often trigger memories! When we lived in northeast Iowa, a few years ago, they still allowed people to rake their leaves into great piles in the edge of the street and burn them there. I love the smell of burning leaves!! I suppose now we should compost our leaves instead, but it sure doesn't smell as good, nor hold so many sweet memories as those autumn fires!
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