Autumn Leaves

Autumn Leaves song - partial lyrics - Google song title for various versions of the song

"The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sun-burned hands I used to hold"

The song, partially quoted above, always pops into my brain this time of year. I believe I learned it in Miss Delma Wright's Freshman Choir class. We didn't sound anything like Nat King Cole or Doris Day. The lyrics seem a little racier than I remember singing at that tender young age. 😁

Summer is my favorite season. I used to pretend to enjoy Autumn the most. Paul loves Fall! Football and hunting impact those feelings, of course. But summer! I like to be warm. And going outdoors not dressed to the hilt with various layers of gear to ward off the chill. 

This year is different. I love the gorgeous low-wind days we have enjoyed thus far. Most leaves have fallen by now, yet the sun's angle and portrait painting sunrises and sunsets have awed me.

 

I think back to Autumns of my youth. Our home in Atlantic was on an Elm tree-lined street (until Dutch Elm Disease felled them) complete with bushels of leaves each fall. Raking was an annual chore and opportunity! We'd rake them into piles and jump in them. 

With neighbors, the Reinertson girls, we'd rake the leaves into thin lines which became walls for our pretend horse barn. We would take turns being the horses - using those rubbery jump ropes as halters around our waists. I loved picking my horse name and describing my horsy appearance. I was partial to black with white socks and a big white blaze on my nose. 

I think our neighbor Harley Baxter eventually managed the leaves - probably composting or burning in his backyard across the street. Later, at our first home in Creston, Paul and I managed leaves the same way. He found out the hard way that one should not burn on the patio close to the vinyl siding! Now I know how bad leaf burning is for air quality - especially for those with lung disorders. Composting is a great way to return organic material to the soil. 

As I age, I continue to look for ways to get exercise. My goal this year is to walk outdoors early - regardless of weather. It's been warm and very dry for the most part - making for gorgeous views. The sad part of that is we need rain badly to fill up streams, rivers, and ponds. The City of Osceola just south of DSM is in an emergency stage as their water supply lake is drying up. Scary! 

I hope you're enjoying Autumn wherever you are. 

This leaf spoke to me - in a crabby voice!

The Driveway

202 Crombie -Bullock home for 30 years

 

Our house is a very, very, very fine house! 

My childhood home in Atlantic, Iowa was designed by my grandfather, Herbert Leslie Morehead. It was built in the early 1950s, a walkout ranch-style home with a flat roof. The house had many special features - built-in drawers in each bedroom, hardwood floors, and lots of light from large windows on the north side. Thinking back, one of the best features was a fairly flat double-wide driveway for the 2-car garage. 

That driveway is central to many of my favorite memories of the first 18 years of my life. Yep, a big slab of concrete. I remember learning to ride my tricycle on the driveway. It was green with a white metal seat. I made the mistake of parking it behind my grandpa's car one day and he backed into it - bending it a bit, but it was still ride-able. Phew! Later it was a good place to practice riding my bike with training wheels. I'd turn around in the driveway and head up the sidewalk and back down again. 

The driveway was smooth - conducive to chalk. That was good because it was used often for Hopscotch - a game that is said to be over 1,000 years old. We played it by drawing rectangles on the driveway in chalk. 

Amazing - saw this on today's bikeride in Urbandale

  Hopscotch rules here

Another game we loved to play was 4-Square. This was a simple chalk square divided equally into four sections. Or you could play with two people, two sections. Players serve and bat a ball with their hands. I remember calling "banks or no-banks" rules. With banks you could bat the ball before it hit the pavement - then hit it again. Otherwise you had to jump aside to let the ball fly out of the square bounds. 

When I was older, I got into tennis (note - we were a golf family so I never had any formal training in this sport). I'd bat the ball at our wooden garage door. I often hit it onto the the flat roof! We had a long wood ladder that I just set up to the side, because roofballs were inevitable. I don't know how Mom could stand that constant thump of the ball! 

My best memories are of summer nights, playing with the neighbors - especially our next door buddies the Reinertsons. That meant we were playing with the big kids! I felt so special when they let us play. We'd play Sardines - a kind of reverse hide-and-seek, where there was one hider. All others had to look for that person and when they found him/her, they'd lay down next to them - making a row of sardines. The last person lost. Reinertson's tall bushes on the west side of their house were a great place to hide!  

We played Ghost in the Graveyard and Kick the Can. For those games we had to pick who would be "It" to start the game. Of course we used methds passed down through the years - usually the Bubble Gum Bubble Gum in a Dish chant, or Eeeny Meeny Miney Moe. 

Sister Susi is central to one of my fave memories. She's much older than me (haha - she's be 70 soon!), so I don't remember her playing with me nearly as much as Cindy and lil sis Betsy. That special evening, it was already dark. Susi's neighborhood friends were there - including Linda Buck and Jeff Grayson. There is a streetlight right over the driveway - a bright spot in the night. Jeff had his bike and they made plans to prank the cops. I'm not sure why they thought a cop would drive by. The plan was for Jeff to lay by his bike on the end of our driveway pretending that he crashed. The rest of us were supposed to flee the scene when the cop drove by - like we'd caused the wreck. Our cue to run was when someone would yell "Cheese It, the Cops!" We practiced the drill several times to make sure we all knew where to flee to. It was serious stuff to be included on this escapade! The cops didn't cooperate in the end, but fun was had!

Our driveway was perfect for jump-rope! I got a new jump rode for Easter one year. It was green rubber with white handles. No wonder we all stayed in shape with activities like that and Hoola-Hoop! Rope jumping also involved many memorized ditties. One of my faves was: 

Suzi Over the Ocean

Suzi Over the Sea

Suzi broke a milk bottle, blamed it on me

How many lickings did she get (yeah violence was involved)

1,2,3 - until you tripped up and stopped jumping

If we had enough people we could use a long rope with 2 twirlers and one to jump in between - or sometimes 2 people (double dutch!). We went International when we got Chinese Jump Ropes. I can't believe I didn't get shin splits! We never had a basketball hoop, but I didn't think twice about using the neighbor's patio hoop, stuck on a wooden pole. Thanks to the Reinertsons for being patient with a kid that probably bounced that ball when they didn't really wish to hear it. 

I look back fondly on these memories. I don't know when my love for driveway fun died out - to be replaced with enjoying the driveway as a place to park a car. We'd pull the extra car off to the side in the grass by the tiny fire hydrant. We drove my grandpa Bubba's 1971 light blue VW Beetle in the winters when my grandparents headed to St. Petersburg, Florida for the winter. Then Cindy got a Chevy Vega with racing stripes - that clutch was touchy! 

Now we live in a neighborhood across from a small city park. Hearing the kids playing still brings joy! I can't wait to play with our granddaughter as she grows up. She's just starting to pull herself up on furniture. The circle of life. 

The Bullock girls with my Morehead grandparents - Pops was the architect

                                                                                        We get to see Nell - and parents this weekend!