Simple Autumn Pleasures

 I live outside of Augusta in a community that is adjacent to the huge Army Post, Fort Gordon.  There are two events that take place every fall and winter on the post and both are well publicized locally. 

In the fall there is a cleanup of the autumn leaf fall and the refuse is burned over a period of a few days in late October or early November. After Christmas there is another gathering of all the Christmas trees that were erected at the fort and by the military living off post.  Once again, a large controlled burn takes place.

The smoke from these two fires can be seen for miles. If you happen to live downwind from the fort you can also smell that aroma of burning leaves and trees. It brings back childhood memories for me.

It amazes me that there are literally millions of people who have never smelled the aroma of burning leaves in the fall. I don’t know when the municipal ban of leaf burning took effect, but it must have been sometime back in the “politically correct” 1970s.

For those of you city-dwellers who have never experienced this, you don’t know what you’re missing.  It was an annual fall chore to rake the fallen leaves from all the trees on our property and pile them at the curb. 

When the pile was large enough—sometimes we had to rake and build several of them—the younger set usually played a game of diving into the pile to “smoosh it down.”  Of course, that necessitated re-raking and forming the pile anew, but the fun we had was worth the extra effort.

After all the shenanigans were completed, the next thing we did was to light the pile and burn the leaves.  It was all done with adult supervision, and I don’t recall anyone setting their property or their house afire.  And since most people on the street took part in this annual activity, it was common to have several leaf piles burning simultaneously up and down the street.

The neighborhood was always aromatic with that smell of burning leaves for about a week or more during the late fall, usually right around Halloween.

If you are one of those who missed out on the fall phenomenon of leaf burning, I feel badly for you.  Unless you happen upon a forest fire, now called wildfires for some strange reason, you’ll never know what I mean when I call the smell 'aromatic'.  I cannot provide you with the odor, but here is a picture of what the activity might have looked like back in the good old days. Notice that those are kids doing the raking and burning, and they’re doing a pretty good job of it too.

 

As a footnote, that leaf raking and leaf burning activity also provided a pretty good chore that the ambitious kids could use to earn some spending money.  There were always some people who were willing to pay a teen to perform the task for them, so it was one of the chores, along with lawn mowing and snow shoveling, that we could use to augment our allowances.  It’s too bad that today’s youngsters don’t seem to have that work ethic.

Donations That Give 100-percent

I promised last December that I would publish a column in time for the Christmas season this year.  It involves donations you can make to help someone else who may not have the funds to provide gifts for their loved ones.  In the year since I made that commitment, I’ve learned of other channels you may use to donate, so I’ll present several of them.

I guess we’ve all seen the stories that circulate in emails about those huge salaries that directors of the large charitable organizations draw.  Whether or not they are truly that large, there certainly are a lot of expenses involved with charitable organizations that eat up our donations before they ever get to the intended recipients. If you care to see what percentage of donations get to those in need, charitynavigator.org is one of several online sites that rate them.

Here are some neat ways to provide for those in need and feel good about doing it on a personal, hometown level. 

Most department stores have a layaway plan that enables people to pay for Christmas gifts in increments.  However, people who have to purchase in that fashion are likely doing so because they aren’t able to afford payment in a lump sum. 

You can aid those people anonymously on a selective basis to pay off their layaway purchases.  And you won’t have to pay off the entire amount in order to donate.  In fact, you shouldn’t pay it off in full, as the account would then be closed and the purchaser might not ever receive the merchandise. You want to leave a small amount to be paid. Your donation could change a hopeful gift to a realized one.

Don’t just blindly pay on someone’s layaway account, but try to do some investigation (perhaps with the department manager) as to what is on layaway and to whom the gifts will go.  Maybe the manager will have some useful input as to the financial situation of some of the people who have gifts on layaway.  In one case cited in an article I read, the person in need was one of the store employees who had recently lost her husband and was providing for several kids.

Of course, there are other ways that you can donate so that some little boy or girl will get a gift.  The best ones I can think of are the United States Marines’ Toys for Tots program and the Angel Tree (Salvation Army) that is usually in the vestibule of Wal-Mart, Kmart or Target stores. And there is always the red kettle and bell ringer of the Salvation Army. Donate to these programs if you want to donate but cannot afford a large amount.

Another way to make your donation count is available at most grocery stores.  The local food banks that feed the homeless and needy have suffered from the economic woes we’ve experienced in recent years. When you check out with your food items, you can also donate in increments to the food banks. 

For as little as $5 you can provide a full meal to someone who might otherwise have slipped through the cracks and either isn’t eligible or has not applied for assistance. A lot of our disabled vets are in this category for one reason or another.

If you go to McDonalds and get change for your purchase, put it in the glass box in front of the cash register and it will go to the Ronald McDonald House, another worthy cause. The proceeds are used to give comfort and care to sick children and their families and provide temporary living quarters for those who do not reside in the area where hospital care is given.

Whatever the gift, if you are blessed with some spare cash and want to make a difference, I cannot think of a better way to do it than to use one of these vehicles to donate and get the biggest “bang for the buck.”

And remember that charity doesn’t have to be a Christmastime activity. As the song, The Secret of Christmas says, “It’s not the things you do at Christmas time, but the Christmas things you do all year through.”