Jumping in the pile of crunchy, dead leaves, hurling them into the air like confetti, was a fall ritual for mid-century kids.

So was burning leaves.

That earthy smell of burning autumn leaves is forever seared in my mind, transporting me back to my Long Island childhood of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Deciduous trees were shutting down for the coming winter in New York, so the first really nippy day in November, neighbors on Western Park Drive would be out raking their fallen leaves.

A light breeze and suddenly foliage would take off from yard to yard, so that we might be raking up an exotic golden ginkgo leaf migrating from some far-flung neighborhood that was now mingling with our run-of-the-mill sycamores and oaks.

As the dry, crispy foliage crackled underfoot, I would help my father in this endless garden chore. Wielding my own child-sized rake with the tiny metal tines, I would push the brittle leaves into neat little piles of vibrant reds and scarlet, oranges and yellow, ready to be sacrificed in the glowing flames of the communal burn barrel.

Gather Round the Fire

For suburban men, burning leaves was a fall ritual to replace the Weber grills that they had put away for the season, giving them one more opportunity to indulge in this primordial behavior.

Fire making and its maintenance were a man’s job; they merely exchanged their seasonal Hawaiian shirts for plaid flannel ones. As with barbecuing, fire seemed to bring out their competitive streak, loving nothing more than criticizing another’s efforts.

Loaded down with half a dozen poplar wooden bushel baskets of leaves, Dad dumped them one by one into one of the 3 black, galvanized steel burn barrels shared by several neighbors.

While a few neighborhood kids huddled together, brandishing twigs to roast the last of summer’s Campfire marshmallows over the orange flames, the men gathered around, chain-smoking and chatting about the big Ten football games as their leaf piles slowly smoldered, sending plumes of light grey smoke into the air.

Inhaling deeply of the rich, sweet aroma of fall’s burning leaves, the fine soot and tiny particles made my eyes water. I would watch as the sacrificial smoke wended its way heavenward, filling the Autumn sky. My only worry was whether the dense smoke would interfere with the flight pattern of birds migrating south, or clog the airways for Superman and Mighty Mouse in their mission to save the weak and helpless.

No one was concerned in the least about the toxic smoke being emitted into the atmosphere or the carcinogens it contained. But one worrisome subject began circulating that fall that slowly dominated the conversation in suburbs and cities.

Fallout

By the fall of 1959, the hot topic over the burn barrel was the potential danger of radioactive fallout drifting in the air. This new revelation caused some folks to question the safety of nuclear testing for the first time.

The explosion of nuclear weapons in atmospheric testing in Nevada produced radioactive debris which was carried in the wind along with fall’s foliage to all parts of the world. Scientists and our government were just beginning to understand how far and wide radiation could travel.

And the harmful, deadly effects.

Now it seemed it wasn’t just Chicken Little who thought the sky was falling,

Acorns were falling, leaves were falling, and now there was fallout.

Rumors were circulating that milk, nature’s most perfect food and my favorite beverage to drink with my afternoon Oreos, was now laced with radioactive  Strontium 90, released in above-ground tests that traveled invisibly thousands of miles to land on the grass American cows ate.

There were doubts and uncertainty among some of the men ‘round the burn barrel. Surely Uncle Sam would never put us at risk.

But the answer, my friend, was blowing in the wind.

Acorns were falling, leaves were falling, and now there was fallout.

Next 

The Tooth Fairy is Enlisted to Find out About Fallout

Someone had to test the levels of radioactive isotopes, particularly strontium-90, and understand the effects of nuclear fallout on the human body

And they enlisted the Tooth Fairy in a big research project.

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