All Things Woompty

They're my favorites

Following along with today's Holidailies writing prompt...

San Diego has got plenty of light displays to check out, and they're pretty much everywhere. On boats, at the various theme parks, in the park...hell, there's even a drive through display at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. But my favorite lights of all are some simple strings of old school bulbs. They don't blink or flash or do anything other than hang along the fences on the bridges that cross the 805.

The lights have been there since I can remember. I remember being curled up in the back seat of my mom's Impala, listening to Christmas music on the way home from some appointment or party or general errand running. We would come up the hill on the 805 south and there they were, twinkling in greeting. They show up over Thanksgiving weekend, and they stay up until after New Year's Day. It is not the holiday season until those lights go up.

These days, I live right next to the 805, and every night on my way home from work I come up that hill and under those bridges. Those bridges are my neighborhood, and I've loved the fact that every year, the lights were there to welcome me home during the busy holiday season.

But this year, we came home from Thanksgiving to find that the lights were hung but only some of them were lit. And they were hung all wrong. I complained bitterly to Kevin about it. How dare they mess with my favorite tradition! Someone needed to go fix the half-assed hanging job ASAP! I would have called someone except for one tiny thing....I have no idea who is in charge of those lights. I don't think it's the city, or there'd be lights on every bridge in town, and these ones are only in North Park. I thought that maybe it's some North Park Improvement Committee. Or maybe it's just been some random old dude who used to do it and he finally died and his grandson was lazy and did a crap job of light hanging and now we were just going to have with the sloppy results.

I pouted for a week about the lights.

But then! Happiness! Someone magically came and fixed them and the lights were finally hung correctly! And all was right with the world except...not all the lights were lit. There was only one or two strings lit on any given night, and it was never the same ones. Every night when I've come home over the past couple weeks, I've sighed morosely because the lights looked so bad.

But tonight, all is right with the world. Because tonight, finally, all the lights were lit, and all the bridges were twinkling above the freeway. Let the holidays commence!

posted by Melinda @ 8:00 PM