Autumn Leaves

Contemporary History 3 - Autumn Leaves

MINE TOO!! BOTH!!

BTW, this is a photo of a comic that appeared in the Hazleton Standard-Speaker September 22, 2018. I hope this is not a copywrite infringement but it just SO captured my content below that I decided to use it and offer every apology that exists if this is breaking the rules. I hope not. If it is, I’ll remove it ASAP.

It was the Fall of 1981 when I first actually met Bernice. We’d been talking by phone that summer as we prepared for her group of adults to attend a program I coordinated in Washington, D.C. I had just been employed again as a staff member of the National 4-H Center in Chevy Chase, Maryland. My job was to coordinate a civics and heritage education program for adults called Know America. The Center is run by National 4-H Council, a foundation that supports the programs of Cooperative Extension.

Cooperative Extension reaches many people with its research-based educational programming including youth (4-H), single and low-income mothers and families (EFNEP [Expanded Food and Nutritional Education]), gardening enthusiasts (Master Gardeners), Crop Farmers, Ranchers, Dairy Farmers, Beekeepers, small business-people, community leaders, and many, many more; programs differing depending on which state you are in (Extension seeks to meet the needs of the local citizens so programming will differ state to state and even in some cases, county to county).

How many people do you know who own pins like these?
You’d own some of them too if YOU were made an
Honorary North Dakota Homemaker like ME!

One of these groups that continues to be a large part of the Extension community are people who call themselves Homemakers, mostly women, mothers and wives, who seek the most appropriate and economic ways to maintain a quality home life - make nutritious, affordable, meals; maintain a budget; and so forth. Finding the dissemination of information somewhat easier through group settings, Cooperative Extension programs across the country created clubs for these (mostly) women to join and called them “Extension Homemakers Clubs”. 

National 4-H Council is an organization that supports the work of Cooperative Extension, primarily the youth development education arm of Extension, by providing educational programming and raising funds through private donations in support of the work of Cooperative Extension, especially if it supports the youth development work; and what better way is there to provide such support than to offer programs for the moms of the young people?

The program Know America, then, was created to provide an away-from-home experience that utilized the resources offered by the nation’s capital to teach civic involvement and cultural heritage to Extension Homemakers and other, interested Adults. KA was a trip to the nation’s capital, including tours of historic and civic importance, opportunities to meet with their senators and representatives, and workshops on how a bill becomes a law and the importance/value of voting. It was a wonderful, educational, way for adults to see Washington, D.C. It became, for a while, a very popular program.  

In 1979, after spending the summer as a member of a team of young adults implementing a similar program at the National 4-H Center for teenagers called Citizenship Washington Focus (my first full-time job), I was asked to “stay on” and coordinate this adult citizenship education program through the fall. In November of that year I was invited to take on the role of “Advisor” to the National 4-B Program of Botswana; a “volunteer” position (I received lodging and a monthly stipend of approximately $300 for food and other minor expenses) that would send me to live and work in that southern African nation for 18 months. January of 1980, I departed out of Dulles Airport; returning home in July of 1981. In August, the KA Coordinator position was open again, I applied, and they hired me back.

So, it was that summer that I got back in 1981, shortly after I regained the KA reins, when I was first contacted by the President of the North Dakota Extension Homemakers, Bernice Larsen. She was interested in bringing a group of North Dakota Extension Homemakers to the Center to participate in the Know America program. We talked. I sent her information. We talked again, many times. Eventually plans were in motion for her to bring her group and I began to make the D.C. area arrangements.

I am a fall leaves enthusiast. I’ll drive miles out of my way to see a red maple in full fall blush. The one in the photo is in Orono, Maine. I’m certain my neighbors hate me because I am ever so much happier shuffling through a pile of Fall Leaves then I ever am for raking them up! My leaves stay where they fall, unless they get chewed up by a lawn mower or blown into the neighbors’ yards by a good fall gust of wind.

That then is the reason that I misunderstood what was happening on the last day of the first KA visit from the North Dakota Extension Homemakers. The driveway of the National 4-H Center is lined with American Planetrees, also known as Sycamore Trees. These trees have very large, maple-like leaves, sometimes as wide as a dinner plate, or even larger. However, they are not great leaves for the fall. They just tend to turn brown and fall down, no great color. But there those women were, Bernice in the lead, all out picking up those huge, brown Sycamore leaves off the ground! “We don’t have a lot of trees in North Dakota! At least, none like these!” she exclaimed as she chose another specimen for her scrapbook. “But these leaves are nothing!” I exclaimed. “I wish I had the time to show you REAL Fall leaves!” But she was happy with the ones she collected so off they went, happy with their big, brown leaves.

As soon as I could, I went out and found some far better Fall leaves for Bernice - red and orange Maple leaves, yellow Aspin, orange-red sassafras; leaves with beautiful, vibrant colors. I included them in the envelope along with my thank you letter I sent them for attending the program and inviting them to come again. That’s when I learned the truth. Bernice loved the leaves I had sent but told me that it wasn’t the colors the women had wanted, it was those particular leaves; the great big, larger-than-a-dinner plate Sycamore leaves! Bernice explained the best they had in North Dakota were Cottonwoods and their leaves are small at best! These women had never seen leaves so large and THAT was why they were being collected.

Every time we saw each other after that (Bernice brought groups a few more years to Know America and we’ve remained close friends ever since), we’d laugh over those leaves. And each fall, she got more leaves from me, sometimes real, sometimes printed table-place mats, metal napkin rings, or picture frames decorated with metal leaves and I got the same - door decorations, coasters, and more!

This year Bernice celebrated her 85^th birthday anniversary. So, this year she received 84 fall leaf stickers and one nylon fall leaf for her refrigerator to mark her 85th birthday plus an additional nylon leaf that carried my wish for many more birthday celebrations in the future!

Now, although that was a nice trip down memory lane, it only touched on the real reason for this post, the FALL LEAVES! Yes, THAT is the topic of this post – Autumn comes to Drumyngham and brings with it AUTUMN LEAVES! 

And what is the best Autumn month? Why, October, of course!

October! Cooler temperatures after that hot, sweaty summer, but not yet giving us those cold, frosty blasts of winter; big, orange pumpkins; dried cornstalks standing in the field rustling in the breeze; big, yellow and black sunflowers; Orion to keep you company in the night sky overhead; big, fat, orange and black wooly bear caterpillars to “warm” your toes; leaves of red and gold and orange and yellow and brown all falling down around you like the glitter in a snow globe. Rake them into a pile and jump into it! Burn them and fill the air with that wonderful toasty, smoky, sweet aroma. Halloween, filled with the laughter of children! Bobbing for apples. Going on hayrides. Drinking Apple Cider (the freshly squeezed, brown, sweet, non-alcoholic kind you buy at a roadside farm stand that comes in those recycled one-gallon plastic milk jugs). Pumpkin Pie! My BIRTHDAY! I mean, what is there not to like?