Two of my favorite things are the fall season and the 1970s. This week, I’m smashing them together. I’m pretending it’s the 1970s and I’m picking my favorite things that I remember from growing up, based on our five senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. Here we go….

I grew up in a beautiful house on Dartmouth Ave. in Canfield, Ohio. The two streets that encompass the neighborhood are still full of gorgeous old trees. The sight of the trees in our backyard during the fall was incredible! The vibrant yellows. The crimson reds. The deep orange. Nothing could beat those colors from the view on our back porch. 

I loved coming home from school in chilly weather to dinner cooking on the stove. When it came to taste, nothing reminds me more of fall in the 1970s than what my siblings and I called “orange meat.” Ok, hear me out. We nicknamed it ‘orange meat’ because the gravy it was served with had a rusty, orange color. Canned tomato soup is involved. The recipe calls for a round steak that is simmered on the stove all day. It’s so tender you could cut it with a fork. It’s so good! Mom always served it with homemade mashed potatoes and, most likely, green beans because they were Dad’s favorite vegetables. I need to make it this month to relive my childhood taste buds.

Like most kids growing up in the 70s, Halloween was one of the most anticipated and exciting times of the year. That included carving a pumpkin. If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know that my Dad was a significant part of this ritual. After he carved open the pumpkin, it was our job to clean out the guts. The touch/feel of the slimy fibrous strands and slippery seeds takes me back to our kitchen table covered in newspaper. My husband and I still make a jack-o’-lantern every year, and the feel of those pumpkin guts takes me back to the fall in the 1970s.

Because our yard was always covered in colorful leaves, the sound of them conjures up memories. The crunching of them walking down our driveway to the bus stop, the way they sounded skittering across the school playground at CH Campbell and Hilltop Elementary, and the sound of the whole family raking the yard. Remember that scraping sound of the rake as it pushed through the underlying grass and gathered the leaves into a pile? Obviously, this was before the convenience of leaf blowers.

Leaves, a comfort meal, and a carved pumpkin can certainly account for smells that remind me of the 70s. But two specific ones stand out in my experience. There were many homemade fall and Halloween craft projects made in elementary school. Before we used smelly markers, you could smell regular ole’ magic markers throughout the school. They were a mix of a solvent, alcohol, and a new book smell. We created lots of pumpkins and witches with those babies! 

Inhaling the smell from our bag of collected Halloween treats on October 31 had an aroma like no other. The combination of chocolate, fruit candies, pennies, and wax lips was intoxicating! Somebody needs to recreate that as a perfume. I’d wear it. Yes, I would. Who else remembers that smell? It was a mix of sugar, cocoa, and earthiness. 

Ahhh…some days I would like to reverse time to the fall of the 1970s. It had such a unique and simple aura about it. It’s crazy how a look, taste, smell, sound, or touch brings you right back to such a specific place in time. Take hold of the things that still take your breath away. Happy Fall!