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I know what you’re thinking. “’Tis the season to be jolly, falalalala.” That may be true, but I saw two things in the past week that gave me another way to finish that beginning phrase.

Here in the Deep South, we have plenty of trees. Many of them are pine trees, but we also have large oaks. The basic oak that we have is the Live Oak. Some of them are very old; over a hundred years old. They have broad and big limbs and lots of hair, I mean leaves!

Just like all of us lose hair from our heads, oak trees lose their leaves. That means we either let our yards look unkempt, or we rake the leaves. Hence, ‘tis the season to be raking leaves.

My neighbors to the side and in front of our house led me to remember the time when my brother and I were charged with raking the leaves in our yard. I saw the two young boys in the yard next to us raking their leaves and, while I was talking to the neighbor in front of us, the leaves were falling all around.

The old farm house where I became of age had lots of trees in the front and back yards. The trees in the front yard were large and mature water oaks. In other places in the yard were at least five large and mature pecan trees.

That’s a lot of big trees with leaves and, as Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry might have said, “Them leaves go on for a while!”

Daddy told my brother and me to clean up the yards for Christmas. We could start after Thanksgiving and, if we were finished by Christmas Eve, we could expect a visit from Santa Claus. We were old enough to rake leaves, but young enough to still have a tad of belief in Santa. Notice I said that Daddy “told” us to rake the leaves. He didn’t “ask” us to rake them and no pay was mentioned. None expected either.

These days of environmentalism are different. I read an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that had an environmental expert advising that it’s NOT a good thing to rake leaves. It’s more environmentally beneficial to let the leaves naturally deteriorate. Doggone it! Wish I could have told Daddy what that expert said way back then.

I’m not sure Daddy would have remembered what America’s greatest humorist said about experts. Mark Twain said, “An expert is an ordinary fellow from another town.” And after Daddy would have given his opinion of the expert, he would have said, “Now here are two rakes. See if they fit your hands.”

With the task in front of us, my brother and I got to work diligently; determined to clean the yards before Christmas Eve. It didn’t take long for the task to seem very daunting, but we raked up our first big pile of leaves. One thing led to another and it seemed the pile of leaves was a good place to wrestle.

We jumped in the middle and, pretty soon, the neat pile of leaves had been strewn all around and was no longer neat and big, but scattered. We had to rake those leaves again.

As Christmas Eve grew closer, it was evident that the job was too big. That visit from Santa Claus was threatened, particularly with the wind blowing and a rain delay. We were going to need some help to accomplish this task.

Daddy had plenty of other things to do, but found another rake and lent his huge arms and with God’s grace, we finished the job at lunch time, Christmas Eve. That was a long time ago but some memories linger. Particularly at Christmas!