Memories from Growing Up

In my 61st year, I'm intending to write a little each day about a memory I have from growing up.  Here's the memory for today:

Lewis in the 1960s was filled with big elm trees, before Dutch elm disease made it there and killed them all.  In the fall the trees would shed their leaves and the lawn would be covered in a crunchy layer of brown.  Fall was my favorite time of year, partly because my birthday was in October, but also because the heat and humidity of summer gave way to pleasant warm days and it was a joy to be outside.  As I recall, we had some old blankets that we would use like tarps, laying them on the ground and then raking a pile of leaves on top to drag off.  But raking a pile of leaves to haul away was not my real motivation for participating in the leaf cleanup.  The payoff was making the biggest possible leaf pile, and then leaping on it with the most energy I could muster. The leaves would crunch and compress, feeling like a big, itchy pillow.  I remember the smell of the leaves, the crumbly scratchiness, and the unpleasant surprise of sometimes being poked by a stick hidden in the pile.  These moments of fun, of course, led to more raking to clean up the mess, and a bath afterward to clean all the leaf dust away.