Three or four houses down and across the street from me lives a wealthy fellow in a very large home on a quarter acre of land. I’ve never met him, but my mailman tells me he is Arabic and involved in marketing cell phones. Every three or four months, an 18-wheeler semi delivers a new car, sometimes a Lamborghini, other times an Aston Martin; also a Smart Car, a Mercedes and a Landrover. I have never actually seen my neighbor, though I did knock on his door once out of sheer curiosity. Throughout the year, a battalion of workmen toil on the house and land. A line of 30-foot spruces has been planted, and a gate erected either to keep the expensive cars in or other people out. The house has been painted twice in four years, and the driveway repaved with hexagonal tiles that I imagine must be very slippery when it rains.
Two weeks ago, this neighbor decided to beautify the neighborhood by illuminating his land and home with, oh, maybe a zillion blinking, flashing, blinding multi-colored lights, eight-foot candy canes, giant (and I would think empty) refrigerator-sized gift boxes wrapped in tinsel and bows, and a full complement of colored elves. The latter line the driveway and appear to be quarrelling over the candy canes, but I can’t be sure of that. The effect is that of a Wal-Mart on ecstasy and I believe the display has caused a road accident or two in the past week.
Two doors to my left, meanwhile, a new neighbor has also planted candy canes though these are more modest and aligned in a fashion remindful of a graveyard. In and of itself, that’s OK, but the effect is all the more macabre because of an inflatable Santa that has sprung a leak. Erect and proud in the evening, the bearded Saint Nick is a spread-eagled red and white corpse by morning. I don’t know if this is intended. In Northern Virginia , some people have very strange senses of humor. Not good, strange.
A few blocks from me in a different but adjoining neighborhood, a Christmas display skirmish has been raging for more than two decades. One family lives in a post-Korean War house of the type built by the thousands in Virginia
Next door to this is a veritable museum of woodworking wonders. I have no doubts whoever lives there has several scroll-saws buzzing year round. The yard features wind mills of assorted sizes, derricks, wishing wells, two small Japanese bridges spanning nothing, a kissing Dutch boy and girl who move with the breeze, three weather vanes, a life-size crèche and a 1975 Volkswagen Beetle painted in a Stars-and-Stripes motif. At Christmas, decorative lights are spread like kudzu over the entire front yard for that undulating look that may make some folks seasick.
Is this a great country, or what?
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