Dear Blog Reader
I hope that this finds you doing well. In the words of
National Public Radio, “All things considered,” I’m doing fine. We are in the
clutches of Christmas mania; making trips to son’s and daughter’s houses, making
plans to go to our annual visit with friends at Arni’s in Lebanon, making some
600 pieces of homemade caramels for work friends and nieces and nephews that
are in college. Thankfully, we have found a neighborhood girl who will wrap
caramels for cash. We continue to scour ebay for a functioning salt water taffy
wrapping machine cheap. Actually, the task of finding a mechanical solution has
fallen to me. I never understand why the lovely Miss Beverly doesn’t share my
love of gadgetry. It doesn’t have to be “labor saving.” It just has to be a gadget
and I am in.
You would think that some gap toothed carny would have “found”
one as the carnival was leaving town. They could simply carry the pile of
mechanical wizardry back to the trailer park and sell it on ebay. No luck so far. Alas, we have had to continue
to look for people who will take jobs that Sharritts won’t do. That task has
fallen to the lovely Miss Beverly. She has always been better at connecting.
Connections are what is needed when looking for candy wrappers. It is not that
we are too good to wrap them, or that we don’t care for our loved ones and
coworkers enough to sacrifice this little bit of time in thinking about gifts
of confectionary perfection. We just
find it mind numbingly boring. Sure I will poison my friends with high fructose
corn syrup, refined sugar, butter, and heavy whipping cream (or as I like to
say all of the good things in life) but I don’t like being bored while doing
it.
While Savana has been standing at the kitchen counter
lovingly wrapping caramels for people she doesn’t know, the lovely Miss Beverly
and I have had huge chunks of free time. We have used that free time very
productively. We went to visit Ben in Bloomington on Saturday and went
Christmas light watching on Friday evening.
I love Christmas lights. Actually, I love to look at
Christmas lights. I am very ambivalent about putting out Christmas lights.
However, I loath taking them down. First off, why take them down on the first
of January? We are still in the grips of the winter darkness. Sure the days
will be getting longer but by the 25th, we will still be 45 days
from driving home with some daylight. Leave up your lights people. Secondly, I
am too lazy to take down Christmas lights. Sure social conventions pressure us
to take them down. But why? Really, what does it hurt to leave up your
Christmas lights and outdoor decorations up year around? I suppose the bright
sunlight of summer would fade all of you Santa suits to pink the first year.
Let’s just say that Santa is wearing pink in solidarity with the NFL and breast
cancer awareness. Also, I suppose that it would be a pain trimming around the
base of all of those santas. But isn’t that why weed eaters and Roundup were
made? I would use the weed eater solution. The grass splatters all over the
santas would work as a sunscreen. This would help them retain their red tint
longer. I challenge everyone to leave up their Christmas lights and outdoor
decorations year around. I promise not to ridicule you or make disparaging
remarks about your ancestry, Cletus.
What about leaving your indoor lights up year round? I do
not care. What people do in the privacy of their own home with their Christmas
lights is up to them. I do remember a house in Lafayette that left a Christmas
tree lit in a window that overlooked a busy street for years. Every two years
the local paper would call them up and ask why they didn’t take their tree
down. The story started that they had a relative that went off to war and was
supposed to be discharged and home for Christmas. The relative died in battle
so they left the tree up in honor of his sacrifice. Later the story changed to
just being curmudgeons who did not want to take their tree down. This micro
fame does point to a bit of discrimination between indoor and outdoor
decoration laziness. Leave your lights up indoors and you get a bit of your 15
minutes of fame every couple of years. Leave them up outside and let’s face it
you’re hilljack trash.
I love to go drive around looking at Christmas lights. What
a blessing it is to have $2.40 gas again. I can afford to drive around with the
lovely Miss Beverly for a couple of hours on a Friday evening watching as
festive Hoosiers blast billions of photons into the dark Indiana evening. As we
were driving around Southern Madison County, I commented that what we really
need is an app for this. It wouldn’t be that hard to develop. Just go out and
get a book “App development for Dummies” perhaps. Give up writing the blog for
a couple of weeks (see last week’s blog), spend countless hours reading and
debugging woefully inadequate code, and out
of frustration pay the kid next door $500 and you have yourself a Christmas
light tracking app. You wouldn’t believe my disappointment when I found that my
million dollar idea already had an app for that.
Of course, I downloaded it. I downloaded it immediately. I
couldn’t download it fast enough. I was set. With sweaty palms, I swiped to open
the app on Saturday morning. You would not believe my disappointment. I live in
a Christmas light dead zone. According to the app, there is nary a Christmas
light display in all of Madison County. How could this be? I had thought that I
had witnessed numerous displays worthy of mention. There were the battling
displays in Ingalls. It looks like neighbors had been going around to garage
sales for years buying up the plastic figures. They had rows and rows of
santas, toy soldiers, candy canes and rain dear. They were lined up facing each
other across the street. Those phalanx of iconic plastic figures reminded me of
a giant red rover game. Red Rover Red Rover, we send Jolly Santa over.
The winter festival of lights in Fortville does not exist.
The 45 minutes that was spent in Summer Lake did not happen. I just thought
that I saw house after house lit up. You can imagine the disappointment that I
felt with that discovery. I had the impression that the concentration of
Christmas lights in the 200 acres of Summer Lake which is surrounded by inky
dark farm land on all sides would be bright enough to be seen by the space
station.
Thankfully, I am a doer and not a stewer. After a few
minutes of outrage at the slight given to the Christmas light outdoor
decoration mecca that is Southern Madison County, an idea came to me. We have
our marching orders between now and Christmas. The lovely Miss Beverly and I
will be taking our iPads and marking our maps with all of the lights of Madison
County. We will not be known as a Christmas spirit dead zone.
Because everybody knows that the lookers are the yen to the
decorator’s yang.Take care.
Roger.
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