Dag-Gum Christmas Lights

It started off as a good idea; take the out of town guest – The Wife’s best friend from California — to Callaway Gardens to see the Christmas lights. The plan was to leave the house around 5, drive to Callaway, eat an early dinner, and then catch the open air trolley for a peaceful hour-long tour of the over 8 million lights. Maybe even have the trolley stop off at Santa’s Village for a mug of hot chocolate and some warm cinnamon cashews or pecans. That was the plan at least. It didn’t quite turn out that way.

Friday morning I picked up best friend Julie from the airport. While we waited for The Wife to get paroled from her teaching job at 4 that afternoon, I spent a glorious day showing Julie around the big town of 50,000 golf carts.

To start off, we stopped off at my favorite barbecue restaurant for a great breakfast. As soon as we walked through the front door, I got abused by the waitress. She thought I was cheating on The Wife. When I explained that I was just entertaining her best friend, she showed us to a table. But she kept an eye on me.

We enjoyed a breakfast of pancakes, red sausage links, steaming eggs, hot biscuits with a dab of golden butter melting in the middle, coffee and my favorite, a quart glass of super-sweet tea. After we ate I continued to show Julie a good time by taking her for a tour of one of our county largest landmarks, the dump.

On the way over to get rid of the trash which filled the back of my pickup, I explained to her that everything eventually winds up at the dump. You buy it, you use it, one of the kids breaks it, then bingo – to the dump it goes.

Julie explained to me that in California they had a ritual of putting their trash in cans, rolling them down to the curb where garbage men in clean uniforms come by and pick it up. Then they roll the empty cans back up the driveway. Where’s the adventure in that? Julie said she had never been to a dump before. I was proud to be able to show her ours.

We spent the rest of the day doing something less exciting than visiting the dump: we drove around golf cart land looking at big houses neither one of us could possibly afford.

The Wife got early parole from her classroom and we made it to Starbuck’s just in the nick of time. After our moca-cokca-latta-thingies we were off to a short 45-minute drive to Callaway. Nope, didn’t happen. We hit construction and it took an hour and a half to get to the gardens.

We didn’t have time to sit down and eat so we grabbed three giant pretzels with mustard and took our seat on the 7 o’clock trolley to relax and enjoy the lights. Unfortunately we had the family of four sitting behind us that lacked, shall we say, any ounce of good manners whatsoever.

The darling boy was 10 and his sister was 5, don’t know how old dad was but for the next hour he acted like a 2-year-old. The piped-in narration and music was timed with each wondrous Christmas scene we passed. And so were the mock gunshots the little boy behind us did every time we passed a reindeer, elf, spring fairy, or swan. “Gosh, darn, Dad, look at all them snow flakes. BAM! BOOM! BANG!” Our peaceful little trip on the trolley had been derailed.

Each new light display brought gasps and smiles from the other trolley goers, but from the future juvenile delinquent behind us, they just brought more gunshots and machine gun noises. Halfway through our ride we stopped off at Santa’s Village and got a mug of hot cocoa. The little elves offered to add some special Christmas Cheer to the drink for a nominal fee. With the thought of the great boy hunter being behind us for another half hour, I happily took them up on their offer.

We took our seats, the trolley started again, and so did our boy hunter. I sipped my hot cocoa. He jumped all over the bench seat behind us, leaping from one side of the trolley to the other to get the best shot off. He shot out flowers, reindeers, and snow flakes. The whole 12 days of Christmas was mowed down with his machine gun, and even Santa didn’t have a chance. Yes, Santa was no match for boy hunter’s exploding hand grenades.

All the while the little girl stood on her dad’s knees and sang, “Oh, look at the preetty lights,” which is kinda cute the first time you hear it, but by the 50th time it starts to grate on one’s nerves.

When we passed the reflecting lake, multi-colored lights shined up from the water to illuminate the many trees that stood on the water’s edge. The little girl said, “Ooooo, look at the preetty trees,” once again.

The boy behind us jumped to his sister’s side and replied, “Them just some dag-gum trees with lights on them,” and shot them all. “Eight million lights out cheer and I’m gonna shoot everyone of ‘em.” Ya know ... I believe he did.

When our trolley ride ended, I got another hot cocoa with Christmas Cheer and we walked through the nativity scene, minus the darling children that had accompanied us on our ride. Julie commented that they didn’t have light displays like Callaway Gardens out in California and she really enjoyed all the colors on the trees from the changing leaves. I asked her what did they have on the trees out in California, and she smiled, “We have oranges.”

Have a happy holiday from The Wife, The Boy and me. And here’s hope’en y’all enjoy all them dag-gum lights.