Fall Memories

A morning's walk brought back a few memories.  

I came across a rare scene; a family raking leaves into a very small pile and their young children tossing them into the air.  Like the lots of today, big house and small yard, the pile of leaves was modest to say the least. 

There was a real hint of Fall in the air, the light, coolness and the musty smell of plants decaying.  With a light breeze, coloured leaves were floating down to the ground.  There was that familiar crunching sound as we walked across the newly laid carpet.

Growing up on the west side of Bronte, we had a large lot...and a very small house.  The yard had a variety of trees, willows, maples, pines and fruit trees, apple, plum, pear, peach, cherry and apple.

Mature maple trees lined Cudmore Road as they did on most streets in Bronte.  Not only did we have to rake leaves from a 1/3 acre, but they had to be removed.  The solution back then was burning.  Long before public sanitary sewers and water supply, we were on a well and septic system.  Most streets were lined with ditches to catch storm water.  

Leaves would be raked to the ditch and burned.  Through out late October, into November, across the neighbourhood would be this amazing smell of burning leaves.  This added to the feel of a Fall day, warmth near the fire, interspersed with the cool, damp musty air.  While the raking was hard work across a large lot; the reward was tending the fire, keeping it going, but not too large to get out of control.

The piles of leaves created were large and you would work hard to get them as high as possible only to spend hours riding your bikes through them or running and diving.  There was that smell of wet leaves and the earth under the lawn that stuck to your clothes. 

There were also the endless road hockey games until dark which sometimes restarted under the lone street light at the corner of West and Seneca Streets. 

 

Jumping forward to the present, that pass time of raking and burning leaves is lost to the environmental correctness of today, as are the simple joys of building a pile and riding your bike through it as fast as you could imagine.  Rarely do you see a road hockey game, that activity overtaken by video games and more.

While the maple and fruit tree leaves burned well, willows were a whole different beast.  They were the last to fall, sometimes well into December.  We had three massive weeping willows on the property, which grew and grew because a small tributary of the Sheldon Creek passed through our property.  The leaves on these trees did not turn colour or really dry out.  Rather, they had a waxy feel and did not burn; rather they tended to smoulder even in a hot fire.  Again a whole different set of smells. 

The magic of these smell brought me back to two additional defining memories and experiences of growing up in Bronte.  

This Saturday (November 9th) will mark the 64th anniversary of the Great Black Out.  

For many, I suspect your immediate reaction will to search your memories banks and maybe use Google. Yes there was the Great Black Out on August 14, 2003. But it was not the first. 

Certainly the more recent one, was dramatic and we all have experiences which still remain fresh in our minds.  While 2003 is only 20 years ago, that was an environment of email, cell phones and media saturation.  The cause and extent was known almost immediately and most people were able to tap into information sources.  People came together, paused and connected as a community and neighbourhood.  There was a sense of calm and celebration and an opportunity to turn off the world for a few short hours.  

November 9, 1965 was far different. My memory has it as a clear and cold evening.  I was in first year of High School at Blakelock.  I likely got home around 4 p.m. after hanging out at the Riverside Restaurant.  My mom worked at Lakeside till 6 p.m. and my father and brother Terry were in Sundridge at our property, cutting Christmas Trees.

As darkness descended, I turned on the kitchen lights....nothing.  Looking outside I could see my godmother's house, it too was dark as was Welch's behind us.  There were no street lights on Cudmore Road, but I could see over to Lakeshore Road, where the occasional car passed. 

Unlike August 2003, when there was still some radio and other communication, I had no information as to what happened, how far the blackout covered or the cause.  Occasionally there would be power failures during thunderstorms or an ice storm, none of which had occurred this night.  

At some point, I got on my bike and decided to head over to Lakeside to check on mom.  There was an  spooky kind of quiet, a partial moon, just the sound of my bike on the gravel.  Again few cars on Lakeshore.  I got to the Riverside and could see the warm glow of candles through the windows.  I stopped in and a few friends were still there, but most importantly no information what was going on. 

I then headed into Bronte and met up with my mom at the store, it too bathed in candle light with Bill Hill working out peoples orders on a lid torn from a box of can goods.

We walked home in silence we opened the door to our house and somehow managed to find candles in the darkness.  I also dug out my brother's transistor radio, hoping there was enough power left in the batteries.  I turned in on quickly turning to 1050 Chum, then CKOC and CKEY...nothing but static.  I check the phone and it too did not have that familiar dial tone. 

At that point in time the imagination of a 14 year old kid began to take hold.  

Remember we were only 3 years from the Cuban Missile Crisis and 2 years from the Kennedy Assassination.  I had also been an avid reader of science fiction and loved the War of the Worlds.  Was there a war, aliens or some other unimaginable occurrence.  We sat and talked made sandwiches and read by candle light.  Around 10 p.m we went to bed

In late November 1962, Oakville was enveloped in dense fog for nearly a week.  With no Weather Network of cable tv, information was limited to the forecast in the Toronto Telegram or what you saw when Percy Saltzman (CBC) did the forecast on that sheet of glass writing backwards.

I was only 10 years old, but I still have memories of walking to school in that dense fog, the smell of the lake and moisture mixed together with smell of burning leaves and decaying vegetation. During recess we would go as far out on the school property as possible, yelling and shouting because we couldn't be seen.  

At the end of the week, the annual Grey Cup was scheduled in Toronto, between Winnipeg and Hamilton. The fog was so dense the game had to be played over 2 days because of stoppages. 

Those wonderful smells along with the changing colours signalled Fall was here and October and November were filled with different sites and smells.  Any thoughts of Christmas were still locked into the  Wish Book, as decorating and planning really didn't start until December. 

Those sites, smells and experiences are lost to time and will not be passed along to the generations of today....a better World maybe not.