Light My Fire

by Eva Pasco, author of "Underlying Notes"

The season of autumn stirs such homespun nostalgia for the colorful foliage on trees aligning the neighborhood streets, dipping apples in caramel, baking pumpkin pies, raking, and ultimately disposing of knee deep leaves surrendered by those mighty oaks.  The controversial and influential American rock band of the Sixties-- The Doors-- released "Light My Fire" in 1967.  Come on baby, light my fire...The Final Solution --rake the fallen dead into Bonfires of the Vanities, pyrotechnic, Dante's Inferno, funeral pyres for incineration. Snap, crackle, pop!  Eyes stung, hair and clothes reeked, curdles of smoke and carbon incensed the air like a priest performing benediction at high mass.  Try to set the night on fire, yeah… 

You know that it would be untrue/You know that I would be a liar/If I was to say to you there existed burning permit regulations or open burning restrictions against leaves, tree stumps, paper, garbage, construction debris, and wood scraps in the Sixties. Though our liberal burning rituals may have nibbled the ozone layer, we were unconsciously recycling.  We tossed our food scraps into a garbage can.  We placed our glass jars and tin cans inside a trash can.  Once a week the "garbage man" walked to the backyard and poured our garbage into a container he in turn emptied into a dump truck, which he eventually hauled to a pig farm.  The “can man" also came by during the week to make his separate collection. Alas, those potential recyclables ended up being buried at the landfill during an era we hadn't yet coined the euphemistic term "refuse collector."  

Meanwhile, my family burned everything aforementioned on a daily basis inside a barrel my father cut holes in for aeration.  Since taking out the trash was my chore, I also struck a match or two to ignite a fire.  A psychologist might have a field day holding up a candle to that one.

Nothing is as vivid in my imagination as those funeral pyres of leaves ablaze with contorted flames of yellow, red, and orange against an azure blue sky.  Well, maybe this--every year without fail, a couple of the Lincoln town fire trucks raced past Angell Rd onto Linfield Circle to put out the raging out-of-control brush fire our neighborhood pharmacist started but couldn’t finish.  The time to hesitate is through/No time to wallow in the mire…Though I've forgotten his name, my mother's “below the beltway” reference left its own carbon imprint long after those flames were extinguished.

Check out Eva's Blog

Order Eva's Book "Underlying Notes"