It’s that time of the year again, World Series, election, and leaves. Naperville’s leaf pick-up program probably keeps someone at the Municipal Center up late at night during this 6-week period when three cycles of two weeks each is scheduled to make leaves disappear from the streets. So far, so good, we are half-way through the second cycle with no snow or ice, no piles of leaves on top of drains, and the finish line is near. Sounds good doesn’t it.
I have been accused of being O-C and I don’t deny it. For me it seems to work. So when the leaf-pick-up program requests leaves be placed at curbside by a certain date, I make sure they are there. There was a time if one leaf was on my lawn, I had to get it into the street. I am no longer doing that. However, if there are two leaves on the lawn, that’s a different story. I’m outside getting them into the street. I see that as improvement dealing with O-C.
One of my senior citizen neighbors isn’t as intense about getting his leaves to curbside, but he makes the effort. Today it turned into a race competition between my neighbor getting his gigantic tarp full of leaves, from his back yard to curbside before the leaf pick-up truck rolled by. It’s easy to hear the truck about a minute or two before it arrives. it sounds like a WW-II German Panzer tank, so I could hear it coming, and so could my neighbor as he desperately tried to dump the leaves at curbside before the truck arrived. It looked like he was going to win, and he did, however the truck rolled-by without the leaf-team sucking-up his leaves, but they did give him a courtesy wave. Further proof that life is not fair. They couldn’t give the old-guy a break. I can say that because I’m an old guy too.
So there the leaves will sit for at least two weeks. Undoubtedly, the pile will be smaller after two weeks worth of wind. My mind wondered for a moment when one match could make that pile of leaves disappear, along with maybe a house or two. Oh, those were the days when fire engines and trucks were racing.
It would have been a kind gesture if the leaf guy would have taken my neighbor’s leaves, but that would have added 1-minute to his work day.
