Leaves, Glorious Leaves!

Trash removal has come a long way since the 1950s.  We had never heard of trash bags. As I recall, each household was allowed to put out only two galvanized cans of trash a week—hardly enough the accommodate the waste of a family of eight.  So we segregated stuff that burned, and my brother Dick did away with it in an outdoor incinerator. Food scraps and other garbage went in a pail that sat in a buried can with a heavy steel cover, its contents picked up periodically to use in the making of pig slop—and yes, there were still plenty of farms and pigs around Leominster in those days.  Grass clippings went into a heap to rot.  Not a compost heap, just a heap.

That left the only joyful activity in the trash cycle:  Leaves.  All during the fall, we would rake them from time to time and heap them under a tarp so they wouldn’t blow away. 

Then the great leaf removal weekend came, one of my favorite times of the year.

On the appointed weekend, we would rake all day Saturday, pushing the leaves near the curb.  After church on Sunday, everyone on the block would rake their leaves into the middle of the street, and that’s when the fun began.  Imagine:  an entire block stacked with layer upon glorious layer of leaves!  It was a kids’ paradise.  For an hour or two, we would run through them, throw them, and bury ourselves in them, having a fabulous time while stuffing our shoes, underwear, and orifices with leaf meal. 

Then the fire truck would come.  As it stood at the ready to take care of any mishaps, the masses of leaves were carefully burned, creating beautiful flames and great clouds of perfumed smoke that infused the neighborhood for days.  Air pollution?  We had never heard the term! 

I doubt that I will ever see a mass leaf burn again, and more’s the pity.