Seen at the store: "Fall Leaves" scented dish soap. It wasn't until I got it home that I wondered exactly what "Fall Leaves" smells like. I went outside and gathered some samples from the back yard. Sniffed them.

Perhaps the soap maker meant "Fall Leaves, as Perceived by a Dog," because the canine olfactory system can detect that a sparrow brushed against this leaf six months ago, although fat lot of good that does anyone. About 87% of dog odor action seems to consist of "someone was here but they aren't anymore." OK, Fido, I'll make a note of it.

Perhaps "Fall Leaves" was a nod to that bygone, forbidden aroma of burning leaves. When it wafted through the neighborhood, it was a strange, familiar perfume that uncorked something in your psyche. "We must all go inside now and bob for apples and have cider and place small gourds on the mantle. The smoke has commanded us!"

Everyone burned their leaves in a big metal drum. No one ever made s'mores — or their low-calorie equivalent, s'lesses — over the blaze. No roasting of wienies, no toasting of marshmallows. You just poured butane accelerant over it, tossed a match and went inside, where apples waited to be bobbed.

I realized it had been decades since I'd smelled a burned leaf. Why not burn one now to see if the soap's aroma profile was correct? Surely that can't be illegal. If a single leaf falls on your outdoor grill and catches fire, the EPA SWAT guys don't rappel from black helicopters.

So I took a single leaf, set it on fire and inhaled. It smelled ... burnt. Nothing special.

Perhaps they have to be immolated en masse to provoke the buried instincts of autumnal nostalgia. Perhaps I could heap a handful and put them on the Weber ... nope, there's a helicopter overhead. Probably following a stolen car, but who knows, they might break off pursuit if their infrared gets a hit on someone engaged in illegal massed-leaf immolation. You can burn 10 and claim it was an accident, but 11, you're probably looking at some fines.

I still hadn't smelled the soap. When I finally squirted some on a sponge and went to work on the dishes, I noted that it resembled a previous aroma from the same brand: Spiced Acorn. Sounds artisanal, no? If a restaurant offered Spiced Acorn Pancakes there'd be a brunch line around the block. Topped with pumpkin-stem butter and drenched in chestnut syrup! No one would say, "Those are meaningless descriptions and all those things have the flavor profile of cardboard." They sound like something a clever, adventurous person would like, and because that's you, you hop on the app and reserve a brunch spot.

I gave the bottle to my wife and asked her if it smelled like fall leaves. She said it smelled like cheap men's cologne. Now I wonder if the smell of burning leaves was actually Brut or Old Spice. Perhaps the secret ingredient in Old Spice was acorns.

There's enough of the stuff to last until Thanksgiving, after which all domestic scent profiles must shift to Peppermint and Pine. It's the law. After Pine season ends, I expect the soap company will offer "Snowbank" scented soap.

"Wow! This is crisp and assertive, and really captures the essence of deep winter!" someone will say, and you won't have the heart to tell them it's really just bleach.

James Lileks is a Star Tribune columnist. 

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