Overheard downtown:

“It certainly is a beautiful autumn.”

“What?”

“I said, it’s a beautiful autumn. Look at all the pretty leaves.”

“What?”

“I said, LOOK AT THE LEAVES!”

“WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU BECAUSE OF THAT #&$@#%$ LEAF BLOWER!”

And so it goes, that the return of fall color is attended by the banshee wail of gas-powered machines to eradicate the same. On a recent morning stroll around Winslow, the editor was subjected to the scream of no fewer than four blowers wielded in private garden strips and on public sidewalks. A generation ago, the piercing shriek was quite literally unheard; these days, you can’t walk five minutes on a November day without an aural assault as grounds­keepers ward off the vestiges of seasonal change.

It’s tempting to correlate the outbreak of blowers with the preponderance of trial attorneys in this community, and some collective dread by property owners that a stray leaf left to molder on a moistened walk might send a hapless pedestrian sprawling onto their bum, and then to the nearest personal-injury practice. More likely, the real reason is this: we’re lazy.

Making allowance that consumer technology will usually exceed mankind’s ability to do something useful with it – witness such current image-sharpeners as home quesadilla makers, automatic toothpaste dispensers and the “motorized grill brush” – the leaf blower is a particularly ghastly device. Fallen leaves once cleared by rake or push-broom and a bit of healthy exertion now are noisily blown back into the heavens from which they descended, whirling off in all directions and usually ending up on someone else’s property or in the gutter. In a nation plagued by obesity and poor health, we should all be doing more manual labor, not less. Yet the triumphantly labor-saving blower really does little more than hasten our collective return to the sofa, the potato chip bag and the remote control. If you want any more proof that internal combustion will be the downfall of our civilization, this is it.

It’s a bit surprising that island folk haven’t moved to ban the infernal machines – many communities have – and we say this for two reasons: one, leaf blowers are a well-documented source of pollutants; two, we’re Bainbridge Island and we like to ban things.

Blower engines are notorious for spewing stinky hydrocarbon emissions into the air, not to mention (on dry days) sending dust swirling about to the discomfort of asthmatics. And then there’s – WHAT DID YOU SAY? – the din. Despite attempts by manufacturers to build a tamer machine, leaf blowers can hit more than 70 decibels. Operators typically wear ear protection to combat hearing loss, yet are wholly heedless of the effect on passersby who must endure a blower’s howl. Fallen leaves are a passing condition; tinnitus isn’t. Yet we’re more concerned with the leaves?

If you want one more reason to ban leaf blowers, let it be this: they are a consummate affront to one of the iconic images of the season. For what says “autumn” quite like kids playing in a carefully gathered pile of crispy brown leaves?

Can you make a leaf pile with a blower?

We rest our case.

********

Correction

• A Saturday story on writer Mark Trahant’s appearance at the upcoming Field’s End workshop included several errors. An arbitrator’s decision on the fate of the Seattle P-I/Seattle Times joint operating agreement is due by May 31. Also, since the recent sale of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, the Times is now 49.5 pecent owned by the McClatchy Company.