One day not long ago in the country I gathered a small pile of dried leaves and started a little fire. Then I closed my eyes and remembered. The aroma was a trigger as intense as the taste of Proust's madeleine, the little cake from childhood that summoned his remembrance of time past. It evoked nostalgia but it also evoked curious excitement and desire.

For me it is not spring but autumn that is the season of new beginnings. Spring, in school, is a time of taking final exams and saying goodbye to friends. Autumn is the start of a new year, and for me at least it always held the promise of new romance. I was now a freshman, or a sophomore, or whatever, and had left behind childhood things, and perhaps Marty would be at the Tiger's Den on Friday night and we could slow-dance to "Dream" by the Everly Brothers.

A new movie is titled "The 500 Days of Summer." That's what it looked like on the last day of school, time reaching forward beyond all imagining. There was a heightened awareness in the room as the second hand crept toward our moment of freedom. We regarded the nuns as a discharged soldier does his superior officer. Here had existed a bond that would never be again. We didn't run screaming out the door. We sauntered. We had time. We were aware of a milestone having passed.

Some kids would go to second homes, or visit relatives, or summer camp. My friends and I would stay at home. We would have nothing planned. The lives of kids were not fast-tracked in those days. We would get together after breakfast and make desultory conversation, evaluate suggestions and maybe play softball, shoot baskets, go down somebody's basement, play cards, go to the Urbana Free Library for Miss Fiske's Summer Reading Club, rassle on the lawn, listen to the Cardinals, play with our dogs, or lay on our stomachs on the grass and read somebody's dad's copy of Confidential magazine. Somebody's mom was probably keeping an eye on us through a screen window.

When April with its sweet showers brought flowers to the lawns of May and birds filled the air with melodies, Dan-Dan the Yo-Yo Man made his annual pilgrimage to our playground at St. Mary's School. He drove up in a dark maroon 1950 Hudson we all recognized on sight: It had the Step-Down Ride that allowed it to out-corner Fords and Chevys at the stock car races out at the fairgrounds. To own a car like that was to be a Duncan Yo-Yo professional.

Dan-Dan dismounted on the far side of the big Hudson, and when he walked into view there were already two Yo-Yos spinning in the air before him, making a whirl of red and yellow. He walked smiling toward home plate, let the yo-yos bounce off it, and snapped them on the fly into his pockets. He took out one, and rocked the baby, walked the dog, skinned the cat, made the monkey climb the string, and went around the world. Then he pulled out a Camel, lit up, and passed out flyers for the city-wide Duncan Yo-Yo contest that would be held on the stage of the Princess Theater on Main Street in Urbana for the following three Saturdays.