City Manager's Column: Rear in a Sling

A lot of people believe that the worst human emotion is "hatred." Others feel that it is "anger." But, I have long felt that the worst emotion is "frustration."

In fact, my image of Hell is that of a hot and humid place where there are a lot of mosquitoes and horseflies and you have to spend eternity painting some old guy's garage. (I developed this opinion one summer when I was a teenager and my dad had me scrape and paint a building of his.)

But, then, my wife and I bought our first house about 18 months ago and decided to try to put up outdoor Christmas lights for the holiday season. Over that period of time, my perceptions of Hell and frustration have been amended considerably.

Xmas 2000. For Christmas 2000, we bought several strings of outdoor lights, but put off hanging them up until mid-December. We thought the assorted colored lights would look good if placed in a wave pattern on the several yew bushes in front of our house. We also thought that we'd take 3 strings of red lights and put them in a little tree by the front corner of the house to make it look like it had several red berries in it.

The weekend that we chose to put out the lights was pretty cold. It is tough to attach the clips on a string of lights to a small diameter branch on yew when your hands are frozen into claws. The wave pattern that we were shooting for didn't look very wavy. The red berry effect in the little tree didn't look the way I expected it would, either. It looked more like there had been a berry blight.

Then it snowed. A lot. I don't think we saw the lights on the yews again until spring.

We learned four lessons from the Xmas of 2000.

1.) Put your outdoor lights out by Thanksgiving, if you can.

2.) Don't put lights where a truckload of snow will cover them for 4 months.

3.) If you're going to put lights out, buy enough as to not look like a blight has hit.

4.) Buy your lights for next year after Christmas this year.

Xmas 2001. For us, Christmas 2001 actually started in December of 2000 when we said, "We're not doin' it that way next year." In fact, I had been thinking about how I was going to approach Xmas lights in 2001 for about 11 months. I remember thinking, "Eleven months isn't so long. I've got to be ready next time."

After Xmas 2000, we went to an after-Christmas sale. Instead of buying 3 strings of lights for the little tree, I got 10 strings of deeply discounted red lights. We also saw a sale on these things called "swag lights" for about two-thirds off the original price. Swag lights can be hung from your roof gutters (also called "eaves") and have a main string of lights on the top and three billowing strings of lights beneath them. The box said that each string was 10 feet long with 150 lights. The picture on the box looked kind of nice so we bought enough boxes to do the front of the house and the side where our overhead garage doors are.

So, for Xmas 2001, we had a plan: Swag lights on top, colored lights in the middle--laying on top of the brick in front of the house, and red lights in the little tree. We were going to leave the yews alone.

But, things never go exactly as you plan.

Upon taking the swag lights out of their boxes, I think I figured out why they were on sale. They actually come out of the box all tangled up. I had the impression that this was done on purpose, possibly by workers in countries that don't celebrate Christmas, so what did they have to lose?

I also noticed that, when you unravel a string of swag lights, it ravels back up again.

Then, I had to take each tangled string up the ladder to attach it to the gutters. Going back to when I was a kid, I have always been afraid of heights. But, in this case, I thought it might be different with a house of our own. I was hoping to be able to actually climb up on the roof. But, you know, when I got to the top of the ladder, I noticed something. It doesn't really matter if the house is yours or not: Heights are heights, no matter who the owner is.

Eventually, we managed to move foot-by-foot and put the swag lights up. We finished with the other lights, as well. Got them done the weekend before Thanksgiving, and they tested OK.

During the Thanksgiving weekend, we were out-of-town. We got home after dark on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We noticed that some other people had lighted their lights, so I thought I'd turn ours on. Our lights are controlled by two timers. I turned the first one on and looked up and said to myself, "Where the heck did our swag lights go?"

Apparently, it rained here, and there were some heavy winds. The swag lights had all blown up into the gutters. I went in and looked at the nice picture on the swag light box. This was the picture that persuaded us to get swag lights in the first place. I then surmised that I should have attached the main string of the swag lights in the groove along the bottom of the gutters rather than to the top of the gutters.

We have already learned one lesson from the Xmas of 2001:

1.) Stay away from swag lights.

Xmas 2002. We have about 11 months again to think about what we want to do for next Christmas. Not a lot of time. On the other hand, we could do as my dad did.

My dad never hung outdoor Xmas lights. He never spoke of them. And, if we, as kids, ever brought up the idea, he'd usually change the subject.

Now, I think I know why.

Happy Holidays, everyone.