Raking the Fallen Leaves

My family home on the South Shore bordered on a small woods. Every October the trees would turn brilliant red, yellows, and orange. The glorious explosion of color lasted until the next cold snap and a good wind would rip the exhausted leaves from the branches. They fell by the millions on our back yard. My brothers and sisters loved running through the rustling piles, but come the weekend and my father would order my older brother and me to rake the leaves into piles. Once the lawn was visible my father would lit our labor afire. The smoke of those leaves filled the air with the fragrance of burnt autumn offerings.

The next morning the leaves would be replaced my their cousins. Less than before, yet millions still and my brother and I would have to reap the harvest of leaves. Another fire. The Sisyphean ritual was repeated until the trees were bare. I hated raking leaves. The task seemed as senseless as mowing the lawn. Something my father wanted done without question.

Living in the East Village as a young adult excluded my performing either of these chores. No lawns and the the wind disposed of the leaves. Municipal workers were confined to street sweeping duties, so our neighborhood depended on the wind to dispose of the leaves from the few ornamental pear trees on East 10th Street.

Most New Yorkers love this freedom from Nature, but my good friend AP was telling of an Easthampton client who ordered the landscapers to blow errant leaves from the estate's 20 acre lawn. Before the crew finished the billionaire came out of his mansion to request that the workers pick out the finest leaves for a pristine pile of leaves for his children to run through after school.

"That's the way of the rich." AP deals with such people all the time as a architect.

We laughed at their excess. That 1% knows how to spend the 95% of the wealth.

After hearing that story I went to shoot baskets at my local park on deKalb Avenue. No one was on the court, but several park workers were raking leaves. I thought about my father and the East Village and then the rich guy in Easthampton. Leaving the park I commented to one worker about raking the leaves and he said, "Yeah, we're bringing them to another park, so the kids can run through them. They love that."

Same as rich kids in Easthampton.

And me too.

It does make a pretty sound.

For the rich the poor and the in-between.