Ten years ago Julie and I moved twenty miles outside the city. We’d spent a long time living in downtown Buffalo and then one day we were ready for a quieter and more spacious existence. So we bought a beautiful house on a nice piece of land that had a peacefulness about it that I’d never before experienced in my life.
Julie’s parents lived near our new house, too, a five-minute drive away. But if they cut through their back neighbor’s yard (which they often did, with standing permission granted) they could walk to our house even quicker. It was perfect. Close but not too close.
From that point on we saw Julie’s parents much more often. My father-in-law Fred and I also started working together regularly on house projects big and small, which we kicked off by rebuilding a ramshackle garage that stood on the back corner of the property and transforming it into Julie’s art studio.
There are forty oak trees in my yard. Forty old, tall, sturdy trees. They are lovely in the summertime, creating a huge canopy that keeps most of the yard shaded. Then the leaves turn magnificent colors come fall. Looking out the window now on this crisp October day I see gorgeous reds, oranges and yellows starting to assert themselves.
Within weeks the leaves will be falling in a heavy downpour and by the end of the month they’ll be covering the yard in a pile many inches thick. At that point I’ll walk through the yard and the leaves will rustle loud and rhythmic at my feet and I’ll feel them up to my knees.
I’d never seen so many leaves until I moved here. It’s impossible to explain how many there are, kind of like grains of sand at the beach. You truly need to see it to believe it.
The leaves also need to be dealt with. They need to get moved off the lawn or else the grass will be covered with a dense, wet layer of leafy goop come springtime. This project, the project of moving the leaves off the lawn with rakes and tarps and blowers, is a massive project. It’s back breaking work that takes many days over many weeks to see it through. You also need to time it right and work with the weather. Wet leaves are extremely hard to move. So you hammer away when it’s dry, and when you know that rain is coming in the next day or two you push to get as much done as you possibly can.
Thankfully and mercifully, the town highway department takes the leaves for composting if you pile them up by the street. They come in a fleet a few times a year and attach a two-foot wide, stubby hose to the front truck that sucks up the leaves like a gargantuan vacuum cleaner. We call it the leaf sucker. Then when the first truck gets filled up it drives off and the leaf sucker gets attached to the next truck in line. They keep going like this until they’ve picked up all the leaves in the neighborhood.
But like I said before, the leaf sucker notwithstanding, it’s still a huge job to get the leaves up to the street. I use a leaf blower that looks like a rocket pack strapped to my back to blow the leaves into piles. The piles are then raked onto a huge twenty-foot square tarp, and each tarp chock-full of leaves is hauled up to the front of the house and dumped into a single mammoth pile that extends from one side of our lot to the other. The leaf sucker will take away three or four of these mammoth piles before winter comes.
Fred loved to work on the leaves. Working outside brought him joy. He’d come over enthusiastically in his old blue jacket after breakfast and we’d work hard until lunch. Then he’d walk back to his house and eat a sandwich and be back an hour later to keep going.
Fred and I bonded over work like this, outdoor, physical work that gets your blood pumping and makes you feel alive. We both liked to put our heads down and just go, continually moving, raking, blowing, hauling. “Raking leaves is perfect for our strong backs and weak minds,” he’d say with a wink and a smile.
At times we’d chat, at times we’d work silently side by side, and at other times we’d divide and conquer. Fred and I would find our flow and just get it done. Des was often out there, too, jumping in the big piles. Then we’d fill a tarp up with leaves and Des would get nestled in and we’d pull him through the yard up to the front. It was so much fun.
It was also extremely satisfying at the end of a long day to sit on the back patio and look out upon the swaths of green that hours before had been piled high with leaves. Order had been restored to our “estate” as Fred affectionately called our property. We’d drink bottles of root beer as our muscles relaxed and we cooled down. Then Fred would head back home for dinner.
Over the next few days there’d be lots of communication about the leaves in advance of the coming weekend. Fred was always game to talk details. He wanted to know how hard the leaves had fallen the night before and how high they piled up. Would the weather cooperate with us on Saturday and Sunday? When the leaf sucker came Julie would call Fred right away and he’d be genuinely excited knowing that a batch of leaves had been carted off for good, not to return until next fall.
Autumn is a magical time at our house. It’s stunning. But the changing of the seasons is also a deep emotional experience, at least for me. The transition from summer to winter is somber and sentimental and achingly beautiful.
Fred passed away last year. It was a year ago this month in fact and it was a huge shock. Fred was fit and healthy and nobody saw it coming. He should’ve lived another twenty years. I was at work on what had been a normal Tuesday when Julie called me bawling. Fred had collapsed earlier in the day from a heart attack.
Last October was a blur of grief and sadness. I did the leaves mostly myself and thought often of Fred. He had been such a steady and enthusiastic companion for the past ten years and I never imagined I’d one day be doing the leaves without him.
Fred was a great friend of mine and I considered him my second father. He was a simple, beautiful and generous man. I feel lucky to have spent so much time with him.
When I remember Fred I see him out in the yard in his old blue jacket. He’s smiling and breathing warm clouds into the cold, crisp air. He’s happy to be outside, happy to be raking leaves. How I wish we could have one more root beer together on the back patio.