late harvest

I was eight years old the first time I smoked a cigarette, but it was not the store bought variety. We were a little more creative in the seventies.

It was the early seventies when I developed a curiosity for things that were typically taboo around home like swearing, nudey magazines, smoking, and parting my feathered hair down the middle. Afterall, Darryl, Edwin, Alvin, and Kelvin were all doing it, why shouldn't I?

Autumn was a time when young lads could easily find themselves tempted to be boys. The rotting leftover garden produce was a tempting harvest for the late evening. We would wait in the shadows alongside highway 32, waiting for unsuspecting travellers whom we could pelt with what we gleaned from our neighbour's backyards. It was always more exciting when they would screach to a halt, turn around, swerving from gravelled shoulder to gravelled shoulder, and begin the chase. We would run like the devil, thinking that we would be killed if caught. We never did end up dying.

Harvest time was usually better for hanging out late. At least it felt like it was late because it would get dark sooner. The harvest moons made the evenings seem mysterious. Late harvest was always a little better. Late harvest meant corn harvesting time. This was the time that the little tufts of hair protruding out from the tops of the ears of corn would be nice and sugary brown and thoroughly dried out. I'm not sure who was the first one to figure this out, but someone decided to take some of this prairie weed, roll it in zigzag paper, and light it up. Oh how sweet it was. We smoked a whole bunch of this stuff. We were cool. The sweet taste on the lips lingered until hours later. When it was time to go home I remember wishing that I didn't still taste it because surely mom would smell it. I can't recall that she ever did.

Last week, as I was driving home, and my hair not really parted at all any longer, I noticed a corn harvester pulling off a crop from a field to the south of the road. As I drove and looked left towards the field, I had a slight craving for that same sweet taste. I thought about my youth and retraced my curiosity.

My oldest son is eight years old. I wonder what he is curious about.