The Roof Raker

His name was Leonard. He was an old hillbilly from Kentucky.  (I never knew why he’d moved his family up to Michigan, but he did - jobs maybe?)  I went to school with one of his sons.  We hung around their neighborhood with a few other guys.

Each fall, when the leaves on his oak tree began to fall, Leonard would climb up on his roof to rake them off.

His roof was fairly steep, and the wind would blow most of the leaves off anyway, so we were always confused why he bothered; all he really needed to do was clean out his gutters.  Yet up there he was, two or three times a week, raking the leaves off his roof.

We always got a chuckle out of it back then.  Now, as a homeowner myself, I keep my gutters leaf-free.  But I do not rake my roof like Leonard did.