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Since I was a little
kid, fall season has always been a magical time for me. When I was
still in school, by the time summer was halfway over I was
already anxiously anticipating the arrival of fall, the beautiful (in my
mind, anyway) weather, even if short-lived in Chicago where I grew up, and the start of the
football season. Of course everything has a down side and for me, it
was that it also coincided with the start of school
 .
As an adult now (my wife might
take some exception to "adult" from time to time
 ), it remains my favorite season; the weather
(here in northern Virginia, anyway) is just about perfect for my taste;
reasonably warm days and pleasantly cool nights. I love that early
morning and late evening crispness in the air and the bright colors as the
foliage begins to turn.....and now I don't have to worry about the start
of school!
One of the fall rituals I
vividly remember as a kid in Chicago was raking the leaves. Not that
raking leaves was, in itself, all that wonderful; but my Dad made
it fun. I may have been the only kid in my neighborhood who actually
enjoyed raking leaves. We had 10-12 Oak and Maple trees on our
property, along with a Tulip tree which had huge leaves, and my dad and I
usually did that chore together on Saturday afternoons. More often
than not, as soon as we got them raked into a pile I'd jump in
them and throw them
all around. My dad would always laugh but then he gave me the job of raking them
back into a pile second time on my own.
The leaf pile
attraction must be hereditary as all three of our daughters did the same
thing when they were kids.
The pictures at
left and below right were taken in Sep 1975 when we were living in
suburban Chicago; Denise and Brandy playing in the leaf pile I'd just
raked up.
In the shot
below, Caroline is jumping into a pile of leaves in our yard
in Virginia in the late 1980s.
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And the tradition
continues..... On a beautiful late fall day in 2002 I was doing some
yard work. It was 10 November, the anniversary of the creation of my
beloved Marine Corps, and Hil and I were meeting a Marine buddy that
evening for dinner and a couple beers to celebrate. Since I'd taken
the day off, I was catching up on a couple chores before getting ready to
go meet Larry.
After raking the leaves into a pile in the
side yard, I had
gone around to the back to rake the leaves there. Within about
10 minutes I heard
laughing and squealing from the side yard and I went to see what
was going on. When I got there, I found that our oldest daughter and the grandchildren
had come over for a visit. Cameron and Sydney had made a bee-line
for the leaf pile where they were rolling around in it, giggling, and throwing leaves at each
other under their mother's supervision  .
The picture above right shows
Denise with her children, Cameron and Sydney, playing in the leaf pile I'd
just raked in our yard.
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