The usual grey dawn of the unnecessary month of November has broken. The leaves of the enormous maple that is not even mine litter the yard, slowly turning from the gay bright colors they sported as they fell, into the inevitable damp brown globs waiting to rot on the grass.
Some folks rake them in piles when they're freshly fallen. Kids jump on the piles with the family dog following them. Winston Churchill said the beauty of a dog is that, no matter how foolish you act, he will do the same thing and enjoy the hell out of it.
In the good old days, the man of the family would finally light up a Lucky Strike and toss the match into the pile, (making sure the kids and dogs are not still in it ), and let the leaves convert themselves into the fragrant scent that used to fill the autumn air in New England. Today that's considered an insane way to burn down entire neighborhoods. The odd thing is, I've never heard of anyone turning a neighborhood into an inferno because they burned leaves. Actually, not even a single house was destroyed in my experience, and I'm 65 years old. But then, I never knew of one kid who fell off his bike and died, or even got a serious wound, but everyone has to wear helmets as they careen around at ten miles an hour today, looking like idiots. I'm becoming a cranky old man.
In about an hour, I'll force myself to drag out the old mower one last time for the year, and mow the living crap out of those leaves. It's not as much fun as burning them, and the fumes from the mower are way less attractive than leaf smoke, but it's a good way to force me off my ass.
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