I looked out the window this morning and saw that the lawn, garden and driveway were covered in leaves. Once I would have headed outside armed with a rake and my leaf blower and quickly swept them up into a neat pile awaiting pickup by the village of Silver Creek, but those days are over now.

Last year my wife, realizing that I was now very much a senior citizen, hired a landscaping company to remove our leaves. I told her I was still more than capable of doing the job but secretly I was happy to give up raking. We are doing the same this year and I’ll be happy to watch them do in 45 minutes what took me several hours.

When I was a kid back in the 1950s fall meant raking leaves at our house. We lived on a corner lot that was probably 250 feet deep and 100 feet wide. On the lot were three ancient maples that had probably been planted when the house had been built back in 1880. By the driveway were four sugar maples and along the streets that bordered our lot were 6 elm trees. These trees produced a lot of leaves and raking them was not a job that could be done in one weekend.

Each fall several weekends in late October and early November were spent raking those leaves.

It was a family affair with my mother and father and we four brothers all involved. My father was the boss of the operation. He could be a tough boss but frankly I don’t think he enjoyed it any more than we did. My brother Bob and I were both young teenagers in those days, and we ended up doing a lot of the heavy lifting while our two younger brothers who were 6 and 8 at the time, spent a lot of their time jumping in the leaves.

We raked all morning, then had a quick lunch and then came out for more. By late afternoon as dusk was falling, we had raked the leaves into neat piles along the street. In those more innocent times, they were not placed there to be picked up by the Department of Public Works but to be burned.

Soon the piles were blazing, the smoke carrying the sweet aroma of burning leaves into the cold evening air. Smoke from our leaves joined with that from our neighbors’ burning leaves and soon a layer of sweet-smelling smoke hovered over the entire village where along practically every street residents stood tending their fires.

The only perk that came with raking leaves was placing baking potatoes wrapped in foil into the burning leaves and when done having them with our supper. For me, they had a taste and texture unlike any other method of baking potatoes.

Another fall event I remember, with about as much relish as I had for raking leaves, were those Sunday family outings organized by my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother to view the fall foliage. I never fully joined in the “oohs and ahs” generated by the sight of brilliant yellow, orange and red leaves in the autumn sun.

One year, soon after the Thruway opened, a trip was made to northwestern Massachusetts to view the autumn foliage along the Mohawk Trail that winds its way across the hills and mountains of that area. The only thing I came away with from journey was wondering why they called it the Mohawk Trail when the homeland of the Mohawks, one the tribes making up the Iroquois Confederacy, was in our Mohawk Valley of Eastern New York.

I often have wondered how my mother, my aunt, and grandmother cajoled the men of our family to make these Sunday leaf viewing trips. Back in the 1950s — before the American Football League, the Buffalo Bills, the Titans, now known as the Jets, and the Patriots — most fans in Eastern New York and New England were New York Giant fans. The old NFL was the only game in town with all games played on Sunday afternoon with no Sunday, Monday or Thursday night games. In our house, on Sundays in the fall, once church was over, our lives centered on New York Giants football, so I have always wondered how the women of the family got us to go.

I have always seen fall as mainly a harbinger of winter, a time of year when we are reminded to buy snow shovels, stock up on rock salt, and to get our snowblower serviced. A neighbor once told me that for him winter began right after the Festival of Grapes. That is a little bit early for marking winter’s start but when the calendar reaches early November, we can be certain that any chance of summer like days are gone until early May. For those of you who engage in skiing, skating, snowmobiling and other winter activities enjoy yourselves and be assured that I will keep my home fires burning warmly.

Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com