Autumn ain’t what it used to be. The sound of the clickity clack manual lawnmower has been replaced by a super charged gas powered grass eater. And the sound of people raking leaves has been replaced by the jet engine leaf blower that makes more noise than planes leaving O’Hare airport.
Kids in my neighborhood looked forward to Autumn for one reason, and it wasn’t returning to school. It was leaf burning. Not that we kids liked to do household chores, mind you, but there were certain rewards for leaf raking in the 1950s.
On a Saturday afternoon, the neighborhood kids (and a few adults without kids) would rake the leaves from the back of the yard to the front where you could gather them along the curb in front of your house and set them aflame.
Before we would do that, there was the ritual of jumping into the leaf pile first and tossing them up in the air, which required a subsequent re-raking into the curb. It was then that the magic began as we pulled out our book of matches, striking them and tossing them into the mound and watching as the fire slowly spread across from leaf to leaf.
The leaves burned slowly as most were not real dry and brittle (unless you put off raking for a week or so). There was an aroma which permeated the neighborhood as the burning continued. Parking your car was a problem since you didn’t want to be too close to the burning piles. All in all, it took only an hour or so to reduce the leaves into a smoldering heap which then required a good hosing down. You had to be careful with water pressure as not to hose the leaves all over and across the street onto your neighbor’s lawn.
I think the city banned leaf burning around 1960. I cant seem to find the original ordinance about it but I do remember people were told to put leaves in bags and set them in the alley. Thus ended a ritual which now made leaf raking a chore rather than a prelude to minor pyrotechnics in the front yard.
It was a right of passage where the old man (for the sake of not doing it himself) would allow us to have matches, after we raked and piled the leaves, in order to set them ablaze and pretend it was a campfire or burning fort. One time, I remember we tried to send smoke signals by using an old blanket. We were caught before any damage ensued.
Sometimes the wind got a little too strong and spun burning embers into the sky, sort of like when you toss another log on the fire. I suppose this is why somebody (whose roof probably caught fire) got wise and they banned it. Like they did fireworks.
Except folks still set off fireworks. And jump in leaf piles.
