Pa would send us above the barn in the woods with a tow sack to gather leaves for the cow stall. We would take the pitchfork and rake up a big pile of leaves and then we would run and jump in the leaves and have leaf fights. This was a lot of fun unless you hit a root or rock when you jumped. It hurt so badly when we busted our bottoms that we couldn’t cry. We just made a noise and held ourselves and grunted. We would also take turns covering each other in the leaves. We would see who could stand the most leaves piled on them before they had to come out for air. Our legs and body kept scrapes and cuts from working and playing on the farm.
—How I Saw Cherokee County written by Wanda Rowland Stalcup
Today’s Thankful November giveaway is a used copy of How I Saw Cherokee County written by Wanda Rowland Stalcup. Leave a comment on this post to be entered. Giveaway ends November 29, 2025.
Tipper
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I too love playing in leaves and raking leaves when I was younger. Those days are over ..
Fall leaves are magical!
Use to love playing in the leaves in the fall as a kid growing up in northern South Carolina, plenty of woods around where we lived. Where we lived was a major cotton producing area back in the day but the land was used up and hardly anything would grow on it. There was a empty field of about twenty-five (25) or thirty (30) acres and nothing buy broom straw would grow on it. Once or twice when we were bored in the fall we would go out into that field and set it on fire to watch it burn and then watch the firemen when they came to control/try to extinguish the fire. Luckly, we never got caught doing it.
I loved playing in the leaf piles!
I remember jumping out of a fork in a tree into a pile of leaves and getting the wind knocked out of me. I thought I was gonna die.
My twin brother and I always visited a friend after church, or a boy would come over to our home for Sunday evening play. Once we visited a friend our same age and we took
large pieces of cardboard and slid down a mountain of dense pine needles. We could really fly on those pine needles!
Love all the memories!
Sounds like a fun time and a great book. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.
Hi Tipper and Tipper fans! Yet another chance at an Appalachian memoir!! Bring it on, Tipper! Hoping everyone had a great day and everyone’s prepping and looking forward to Thanksgiving. I know I am!! May God bless us one and all and especially Granny!!
This sounds like a wonderful childhood. Many children don’t get to experience an active, outdoor life now where scraped and bruises were the norm and healthy play was an everyday occurrence.
Leaves are a universal childhood toy. Besides the usual pile jumping and kicking through, they were one of my favorites on the school playground–even though it was asphalt we figured out how to use sticks to scrape them into houses with rooms and doorways. I haven’t thought of that in so long! Thank you
Loved playing in the leaves.
I love playing in the leaves growing up and enjoy watching my granddaughter do it now.
That’s a fun story about playing in the leaves. As a few others have mentioned, we also have a huge oak tree in our back yard which has shed almost all of its leaves. I wonder if those kids actually remembered to fill that sack with leaves to take back to the cow barn?
I would love to share photos of my beautiful section of the Cherokee National Forest with everyone. It is a lot like Matt and Tippers place. My creek is behind the 600 sqft trailer. Sometimes it runs dry and sometimes runs under the trailer. I love that creek. GOd gave it to us. I have Black Walnut trees everywhere. I planted a red oak from South Carolina in the east fence row about 15 yrs ago. It is about 12 feet tall now and had 2 dozen leaves on it this year. Our big Sugar Maple in the front yard fell after a big wind storm 2-3 yrs ago. It has been struck by lightening and lost a few limbs over the years but the lightening hollowed it out and it died. I miss the shade and the golden leaves it brought to us. When it fell it missed our cars by millimeters. A few of the trees on the big hill behind the house have slid down off the hill, slammed into the creek and then fell across the back yard to crack a few top branches against the trailer. There is a 20ft Walnut tree limb out in the back yard right now from the last big wind (45mph gusts) we had. It is all wonderful and GOD blessed us with it all. I’m keeping everyone in my prayers. I praying for Granny to get to have an extra special Thanksgiving this year 😉 I love y’all.
What a wonderful memory pf playing in the leaves…sort of like playing at the beach in the sand.
Cathie in Utah
As a child in my childhood home, we had 3 giant oak trees in our side yard next to the road. Oh my, the leaves that we had to rake! We had days of fun playing & jumping in the piles we had made. But then had to rake them all again when Dad said it was time to clean them up. We would rake them up on big tarps and drag them to the ditch beside the road. Dad would light a fire to them and that was the end of them until the next fall.
Is Pa her grandfather Thomas Matthew “Mathie” Rowland who raised her, her sister Linda and brother Jerry? Did her mother remarry a Potter and have three more children, live in Granite Falls and die in Lenoir in 2005?
Ed her grandparents did raise her so I’m sure that is right 🙂
I can remember my twin sister Becky and her fiancé’ Bill playing in a pile of leaves in November just laughing and giggling having a great time before their December Wedding! It was a sight to see! I was giggling right along with them! Just like when we were kids! So much fun! Those were the days!
i grew up in california.
deciduous is not a thing in california.
when i visited my also californian bff in new york once we were grown, she showed me how to preserve them by rubbing vaseline intensive care into them. individually.
My brother and I played in the piles of leaves. My mother always (and still does) insisted that the leaves were raked. That meant more than one raking each fall. We grew up spending time on my Grandpa’s dairy farm, but there were no trees. Just flatland out in the country.
We have three pecan trees that drop limbs year around. Every time I mow I have to gather limbs first. They also tend to drop a huge amount of leaves at once. I use the blower to move them to the grass and run the mower over them several times. I’ve heard and read this helps the soil.
We were just talking about playing in leaves yesterday and how that was so much fun! Running and jumping in a big pile of leaves, oh there is nothing like it! My husband grew up in town and folks would rake leaves into piles on the side of the streets and he would take his bicycle and ride through the piles. I sure that didn’t sit well with some of them 🙂
We used to rake up the leaves and let the children my mother babysat play in them….kept them occupied for a good long while! I’ve been Christmas and birthday shopping for my little grandson who turns a year old next week and with how expensive alot of the toys are and considering he’d rather play with any kind of trash I’ve threatened to just get him a few cardboard boxes and some old kitchen utensils lol. He’d be happy as a clam!
Cassie, I have a picture on my daughter (about 2 years old) sitting in a cardboard box playing with a camera flash cube and ignoring her Christmas toys. She would have been 45 years old this year if she had not died in ATV accident when she was 32.
I have never been one to try and rake leaves on my 2 acre yard. I will take my mower and cut them up into mulch and leave them or cut in one direction and blow them out of my yard with the mower. I will sometimes rake some up and scatter them on my garden spot and then till them into the soil in the spring of the year. Living in the country and with my closest neighbor being at least a quarter of a mile away, I can either burn them or pretty much do as I please. There may be a few regulations that are ignored and nothing ever done to enforce them. I am not trying to be a smart aleck but I live on 30 acres of land that has been passed down through the generations, the same thing applies to many of my lifelong neighbor families, we can do many things we could not do if living in town or these subdivisions/housing developments. Thank God for my being blessed to live in the country, nearest small town 15 miles away!
I never got to play in the leaves as a kid. But as an adult I flew belly first into a great big pile of leaves that I had raked up. I guess the pile wasn’t big enough, or I was too big, because I landed smack flat on the ground. Ouch! It was the first and the last time I “played“ in the leaves, but I’m so glad that I did it. Happy Thanksgiving!
Tipper – I can’t say for sure, but didn’t you once share a picture in one of your videos of you & Matt laying in the leaves back in your early days? Leaves are a thing of beauty in all their stages of ‘life’ – from budding to laying on the ground.
Wanita, I did 🙂
I bet that’s a fun book! I love the leaves this time of year.
There’s a big ol imaginary vacuum hose that sucks up every leaf in town and deposits them at my back door or in front of the garage, a nice pile to play in that didn’t require any raking. They must like being jumped on because I rake, blow and scream at them, and they still return the next day.
Hello Pressley Family! Wishing each of you a very happy Thanksgiving! Our forecast for the holiday is to expect a fierce gale warning for Lake Michigan with 8′ waves. Those winds will usher in a drop to 30° for turkey day. It’ll be good to stay indoors and make a nice apple pie. I can smell it already! Prayers going to Granny so she can enjoy some of the fixins for the holiday. I wish everyone an abundance of love and peace!
Love playing in the leaves!
Maybe I told this before, but we were raking leaves for the cow stall, like Wanda Stalcup, when the pitchfork tines clicked against something under the leaves. It was a jug of moonshine down in a stump hole, and we pretty well knew which neighbor it belonged to. We bagged our leaves, left the jug covered, and went to tell Dad what we had found. He visited the neighbor and told him he should relocate his product, which he did, with thanks. A long time afterward, that neighbor was found dead on a mountain trail. A big bag of sugar was lying there beside him.
i remember daddy raking leaves and i loved running and jumping in them. oh so much fun for little children. then daddy would start burning them and i loved that wonderful fall smell.
Growing up my Mom never cooked a Turkey. I don’t remember ever eating with my grandparents for thanksgiving. We would spend the day raking and then my Dad would burn the leaves in the gravel driveway. You never forget the smell of burning leaves.
As a adult my Mom would cook and we would come home. Our family is small, with less than 10 of us. I cook a Turkey and this year I’m cooking Tippers sweet potato recipe. I’ve already cooked them about 4 times. They are the best.
Thanks for the burning leaves memory!
Happy thanksgiving everyone
I always loved the smell of burning leaves, they always burned them at the grade school I went to in the 1950’s.
Oh I used to love playing in the leaves! We don’t have very good “leaf trees” in our yard now, but I’d dive right into a pile right now given the chance
I lived in town, thus leaves stir in me a different memory. There were large maples and oak trees in our yard. I lived on maple street , and true to its name, the street was lined with maple trees. As the fall wind stirred, it moved them from yard to yard and so every yard had huge mounds of them. It was almost impossible to walk to school without having to walk through a pile……well….to be honest you did have to veer off of the sidewalk to run through the largest piles….but every good walk has to have a few good places to go off of the path. Saturdays were leaf raking day. Everyone’s dad was off on Saturday in our neighborhood and so every dad was raking and burning leaves.
I am finding as I grow older that the smallest thing will bring back the most vivid memory…and for a brief moment I am back….on maple street. With a morning breeze turning my cheeks pink, I can see my Dad raking leaves with an old metal rake, no blowers in those days.
What a vivid picture she givesof those kids playing in the leaves! We send our kids out with a big trash can to gather leaves for our cow’s bedding too. She will also eat the maple leaves from time to time. I have heard they help fight parasites.
❤️ to all!
When I was a little girl, we lived in the country and there was a huge oak tree that stood at the edge of our yard. My brother and I spent many happy days in the fall playing beneath that tree. On wash days, Mama would light a fire beneath a big black washpot and do the laundry while my brother and I would swing on an old tire swing attached to one of the limbs. My brother couldn’t speak very plain, so on blustery days when the leaves came tumbling down, he would get so excited and jump up and down and say, “It’s yaining, it’s yaining!” (raining). Oh, the joy of being little and growing up in the country!
What kid doesn’t love playing in the leaves, lol!
As always praying for Granny.
It has been many, many years since we burned leaves in the yard, but I can still remember the smell. Fun times!
Brings up good memories.
Growing up in Florida we never had fall leaves but we did have moss that covered most trees. After a good strong wind we would take pitch forks to gather piles of the stuff. The only problem was they were full of red buds or chiggers and we’d be bitten all over. Mom’s remedy was to paint clear nail polish on the itchy bites.
Also good memories.
We lived on a little street of prewar company houses no larger than 600-1000 sq. ft. in size. The street was lined on either side with beautiful maple trees. Daddy would rake the leaves into piles and let us play in them. When we finally tired out, he would rake them up again and burn them. That was back when there were no laws about burning leaves. I will never forget the wonderful rich, earthy smell of those burning leaves.
If more people played in a pile of leaves, the world would be more happy and peaceful.
I agree Lenora!
got a lot of leaves around the house, live under a big oak tree, the neighbors like to build a fire outside at night, it worries me, but praise God we got some rain today, Happy Thanksgiving to everybody, God bless you all in Jesus name
As a child, WHEN you got play time you had to make up what you were going to play. There was a big big hill in front of our house and we coul see Bluff Mountain from the right side out of our Picture Window. In the fall of the year when most of the leaves were fallen and dry, we kids would climb that hill with a piece of cardboard and slide off it. When I think about it today it is a wonder that we didn’t get killed. There was always two flying down at a time. The meadow at the bottom was short with a creek bottom. One time my sister was in the front and Uncle Homer who grew up with us in in the back. About half way down they hit a root sticking up in the ground. They went mid-air. Homer landed on top of my sister and knocked the breath out of her. Her eyes were big as saucers as she was trying to tell us she couldn’t breathe. Of course we didn’t know what was going on with her. Finally she caught her breath and started crying. We never slid back down off that hill again. Happy Thanksgiving to all of your readers and to you all. I hope granny is well enough to enjoy the meal and family this year. I am lifting up all that is sick and sad who needs a special touch from our Heavenly Father. God bless each.
Fun and free! What’s better in a world that costs so much to live? I love trees and leaves, but after Helene and approximately 800,000 pounds of hickory trees and roots and one one atop the house, my whole perspective on trees changed dramatically. They’re cool and awesome til they uproot before your very eyes as they topple like a wheat sheaf while you don’t know which way to run or even what to think trying to get away…. I have an acre of no trees and although it makes me somewhat sad, it’s a huge relief when the high winds blow. The older I get the more I see the fine line between all things that exist and BOTH good and bad.
Sadie, I’m so glad you are a survivor of Helene and I hope you never experience another one like it. Remain blessed and keep counting your thankful blessings!
Don’t you remember how the leaves smelled when you were covered up! oh, it was such a wonderful earthy fragrance! what great memories!
As a child we lived out in the country surrounded by open farmland. The leaves that fell from the trees in our yard just blew away. No opportunity or need to rake!
Sounds like a wonderful book. God bless!
When We We’re Growing Up, My Two Brothers William, Bobby, I Would Rake Leaves In Huge Piles,Jump In,Have A Ball. Even Our Dog, Cat’s Would Join In…
My daddy as a boy raked many a leaf around his old homeplace up in Granite falls NC. Lots of old Poplars and old Oaks surrounded the house. Sometimes he got a few cents from his pa to go to the picture show. He told me it was quite a job for the little fella he was. Leaves were work. He lived to be almost 98 years old and when he would see old tress that had been logged going down the road he hated it. He still loved big old trees. Only for the reason it reminded him of home. I miss my daddy.
We have lots of giant oak trees and our yard is covered in the fall. My children always loved jumping in piles of leaves. I have a fond memory of my oldest child and I lying on the bottom of her slide with her lying on me looking up at the sky…watching the leaves twirling and falling all around us. What fun we had! A couple weeks ago, we were having wild wind gusts and three of my grandchildren were here playing outside. They tried to rake up a pile of leaves with their hands, but the wind had other ideas. So they just gathered up handfuls and tossed them in the air… squealing and laughing the whole time. I got some great pictures. A couple times the wind caused the leaves to blow in a circular motion and fly through the air. Our four-year old got so excited about what she called ‘leaf tornados’.
Good memories!
Every child should experience playing in the leaves!
We loved doing that as a kid. im pretty sure I’ve done this as an adult.
We would play in the leaves our dad would rake up when my sister and I were kids. Sometimes we would help with the raking, but the rakes were bigger than we were and hard to hold. I remember getting stuck a few times from the twigs and branches that would end up in the pile, thankfully no serious injuries.
Jumping in the leaves was so much fun when we were kids but raking them back up afterwards , not so much!
Have a blessed day!
Love and prayers
I remember doing some of that when I was younger….fun it was. Getting ready for Thanksgiving along with some fall like cooler weather. We’ve been having highs in the low 80’s…will be nice to see some highs in the upper 50’s and 60’s for a few days.
The wind is blowing the stubborn, ‘hanging on’ leaves today. Actually, since about midnight, I’ve heard the wind chimes beating each other up like 2 young boys fighting over hot wheels out on the front porch. Rain, a cold rain, is helping the wind now. We’ve been in the 60’s lately here in Kentucky but the colder Temps are expected Thanksgiving Day. Remain thankful!
I remember doing that as a child.
Tipper.
They had to use their imagination to think up fun things to do?
Every kid needs to play in a giant pile of leaves at least once.