An Off-Kilter Christmas

This Yuletide season has seemed a bit peculiar for my wife and me. Our impression that this was an off-kilter Christmas was mainly due to a summer and fall that passed in a blur of chemotherapy and radiation treatments and doctor’s appointments to treat my tonsil cancer.

We were in Brookings one evening and decided to take in the view of residential Christmas lighting. We were somewhat disappointed when we could find only isolated islands of cheerful lights, not the blocks-long, dazzlingly luminous holiday vistas we had hoped to see.

I recently had a couple of follow-up checkups in Sioux Falls, so my wife and I decided to spend the night and make an evening of it. By “make an evening of it” I mean “drive around and look at the pretty Christmas lights.” Sioux Falls delivered.

One block that we decided to tour – based on the nuclear-level glow that it emitted – was chockablock with Christmas lights and decorations.

We passed a house whose front lawn featured a 12-foot-tall blowup Grinch along with a trio of similarly sized dinosaurs. I don’t know what a triceratops or a tyrannosaurus might have to do with Christmas other than that they were as green as the Grinch. Kids must simply love dinosaurs regardless of the season or the reason.

A neighboring lawn was home to a two-story-tall blowup Santa along with a quartet of outsized reindeer. Closer examination revealed that one reindeer’s noggin had deflated, leaving the impression that he had lost his head. Maybe it was due to an argument with his missus over the proper position of the toilet seat.

There were numerous tall trees on the block that sported cheery Christmas lights that ran from the treetops to the ground. I would guess that something such as a cherry picker had to be used to install those lights. Either that or someone has a really strong throwing arm.

We eventually wended our way to Falls Park, where the city had installed more than 30 miles of Christmas lights. The park did not disappoint.

I once read a story, which may or may not be true, about the founding of the city of Sioux Falls. It seems that some land speculators had scouted out the area sometime before it was settled and decided that the falls of the Big Sioux River would be a grand place to locate a new town. The trouble was that the falls weren’t really all that grand.

The story goes that the speculators dammed the river upstream from the falls. The speculators then blew the dam shortly before they brought in a group of investors. The falls were roaring mightily and the investors eagerly agreed that this would be a mighty good place to start a new settlement named, appropriately, Sioux Falls. The rest is history. Or perhaps it’s just a myth.

The lights at Falls Park lived up to the hype. Glimmering, cheerful decorations festooned every twig, branch, and trunk. Lights had been used to create a pair of tractors along with the outlines of a pig, a sheep, and a cow, a nod to the deep farming roots of the area. There was no representation of the sprawling slaughterhouse that lies just a block away, across the river from Falls Park.

We’ve had some deeply cold weather, so the frozen falls looked like an impressionistic sculpture consisting of a haphazard mishmash of stalactites. As the sound of falling water burbled from beneath the sculpture, the falls mysteriously turned Grinch green then Santa red then green again.

This was due to the clever placement of some very powerful lights, of course. But it made me think of the legendary illusion that had been created at that same spot all those years ago.               

The holiday lights at Falls Park were very pretty. They were well worth the price of admission, which was nothing. I know that LED lights are super-efficient, but the electric bill has to be tremendous. Our hotel room cost quite a bit; perhaps the expense of lighting Falls Park was tacked onto its price.

The next morning, we met with my otolaryngologist (there’s a mouthful for you) to review the results of my recent PET scan. I was told that there was nothing to report. It was the best possible type of nothing, as in no signs of cancer. Zero. Zilch. None.

I said to the doctor, “This isn’t your first rodeo. What do you think of my case?”

“I have high hopes for a full cure,” he replied.

My wife and I drove home in high spirits. We decided that this was the best Christmas ever. 

Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.