Rudolph The What?

The Old Man was born long before Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Ruddy didn't come along as the popular Gene Autry song until 1949. We had to somehow manage to make it through Christmas without either him or his buddy Frosty the Snowman, who drifted into the scene in 1950. We hung on for dear life to the classic 'Twas The Night Before Christmas as our touchstone to the magic. In our house, we walked down both sides of the street.....the birth of Jesus on one side, and the excitement of Santa Claus on the other. As a family, we happily diddy-bopped back and forth with abandon; sometimes quiet and introspective, other times wound as tight as 10 # test line with a 4 ounce sinker.

I noticed on a recent trip to mecca (WalMart), the variety of Christmas lights available bends my mind. They blink, chase, twinkle, dim, brighten, mark time to music, and probably will one day put themselves up and then take themselves down while doing laundry and cleaning out the gutters. "Twernt that way back in the day".

The outdoor lights were strung on rubber coated wire and sockets that held 3 inch long colored bulbs. Today we would probably say, "Candelabra base" but back then most folks referred to them as "porch lights". Now, my dad was a wonderful man, but his mechanical skills were not his strong point. So with great clatter and fits and starts, the light hanging project began. Dad would plug the string in to check for burned out bulbs and then begin to hang them. Just about each year, he would mis-figure and drive a staple through the wire, thus blowing a fuse and putting a halt to the project while he trekked to the fuse box and replaced the offender. Then, back to the operation. Other years, he would get the string all the way across the porch, and then plug them in. Now the fuse would blow and he would have to scamper up and down his rickety ladder trying to find his mis-aimed staple. Over the years, the rubber wire developed a number of holes, and consequently, sometimes when testing before hanging, there would be a light show like a meteor shower. While Dad was a kind and mild-mannered man, the porch light project always tested his patience. My girls will tell you that I inherited my father's great love of Christmas lights.

The tree lights were a microcosm of the porch lights. The bulbs were a bit smaller, but only a bit. Over the years, the wire had hardened and cracked and once in a while, it was back to the fuse box. Considering that the only tree ever used in most homes was a cedar tree, it's a wonder we didn't all suffer the same ultimate fate as Joan of Arc. More about the tree in a later post.

I ended up with those porch lights for a time. The last time I saw them, we had used them for decorations at a Christmas tree lot when I spent some time in the Lions Club. They were strung across a little trailer we were using as our base of operations. As the tree sale began to wind down, suddenly there came a popping and snapping accompanied by the smell of ozone and a shower of sparks, followed by darkness. Seems the rubber had finally departed this world and the metal trailer added insult to injury, sending the lights out in a blaze of glory.

Makes one wonder if Rudolph ever short circuits?