I left the concrete path and began walking across wet grass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I noticed brown and orange leaves of maple and oak coloring the green.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I stopped, bent over, picked up a leaf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mind drifted to similar leaves, similar grass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My large childhood yard had maple, cherry and oak trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every fall, leaves would twist and tumble to the grass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was my job to rake them up into giant piles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I arranged the piles to resemble an offensive line in football.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tex, my beagle,would stand on the opposite side of the piles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would toss him a hamburger chew toy, he snagged it, then bolted through piles like the fat fullback he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would play middle linebacker, meet him in the hole, tackle him, boy and dog would roll on grass, leaves would fly and fly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We played this game for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He knew it was coming when I started raking and waited with the hamburger in his mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When he died, he was buried in the yard with that hamburger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Raking alone the next fall produced some of the saddest moments of my young adulthood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Raking had forever changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Raking, raking, raking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was a steel rake kid: green, wooden handle, sturdy, union-made in a US factory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leaf blowers robbed the neighborhood of silence and raking the interior mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They corrupted our souls, bewitched us for convenience, seduced us to forsake rakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do they still sell steel green rakes with wooden handles?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hate plastic ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Too stiff, graceless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trilling sound made by a steel rake raking leaves, so distinct, soothing, a rhythm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Massage therapists should play it during massages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The novel The Virgin Suicides<\/em> easily contains the best leaf raking scene in American literature (ch. 3, pp 86-89).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The author, Jeffrey Eugenides, compared the different methods that various suburban households raked their leaves: \u201cThe first weekend after leaf fall, we began raking in military ranks, heaping piles in the street.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n American families don’t rake leaves together anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I left the concrete path and began walking across wet grass. I noticed brown and orange leaves of maple and oak coloring the green. I stopped, bent over, picked up a leaf. My mind drifted to similar leaves, similar grass. My large childhood yard had maple, cherry and oak trees. Every fall, leaves would twist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9901,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9900"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9902,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9900\/revisions\/9902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}