Another weather-induced muse has brought with it a subtle memory along with the wind blown leafs and the cool demeanor of this new, evocative and tonalist oil painting original. Wow, that's a real mouthful. The subtle memory might not seem so subtle once I get into it, nevertheless, be that as it may, the cloudy melancholy of this scene works it's magic on several levels, not the least of which is the following.
We called ourselves the Riverdale Rightfooters. There were four of us and we were a gang. We dragged our right foot as we ambled arm in arm down Riverdale road towards the streetlight. It was our adolescent attempt at satire. This was before we knew much of Monty Python and Saturday Night Live on television was yet to come. Even without these prompts (we probably had seen West Side Story) we were quite adept at lampooning the few icons that filtered through the skewed lens of mid-seventies cultural awareness and made it down to our level. We made each other laugh and that was enough...almost. As we feigned toughness and talked about what the gang ought to stand for the silliness of our antics soon gave way to the detrimental effects of idleness, which, as we all know, is the devil's own workshop. Our neighborhood was one of large, heavily treed lots. This meant heaps and heaps of leaves to be raked every fall. Heaps and heaps of leafs translated into many bags at the end of many driveways waiting for trash collection or...re-distribution or...burning? Of course. Why not? They're light and fluffy and after all you can only play just so many games that have to do with jumping in leaf piles. Did you ever play Mummy mummy? I'll digress a bit here to tell you how it's done. One person is buried and the rest march around the leaf pile chanting..."mummy, mummy rise from the dead, if you don't we'll chop off your head." The "mummy" was the person who was "it". At their discretion they would leap out of the pile and catch the first person they could and so an autumn twist on "tag" was played. Ok, back to the Right Footers. Actually, back to the corner where the streetlight burned...directly over the sewer grate. It looked to be about twelve feet down. Hmm, how many leaf bags do you think it would take to fill the drain sewer shaft? I'll tell you; about twenty five. Now, what to do with all those leafs but to douse them in gasoline and really give the Riverdale Right-footers something to drag their feet about! I don't know that I'm proud to say this wasn't a one-time event but the plumes of smoke and fire that we sent into the atmosphere during our reign as the only true gang our neighborhood ever saw is a fitting homage to...the lack of chores, too many leaves and not enough parental oversight.
