It’s just past Christmas, but I just remembered this story that happened around 1979. We had bought a duplex in Escondido and were approaching our first Christmas in the home. Joyce had bought a box of lights at a garage sale the previous summer and it was my task to setup the exterior illumination. The lights were the old large, hot, bulb variety that was rapidly disappearing with the new, smaller, twinkle lights of today emerging. The house was old, but new to us, so I didn’t want to use a lot of fasteners to string lights like everyone else did, and one afternoon before Christmas I was laying in my hammock on the back patio when the creative idea was suddenly right before me! The orange tree in our yard was just ripening fruit and I thought I would string the big lights in the orange tree and use the oranges as ornaments.
I rolled over in the hammock, being mentally drained after coming up with such a masterful idea, and finished my nap; but the next day I put the lights in the tree and it was spectacular! My Sister Grace and her family came out to visit Mom and Dad that year and we all had Christmas dinner at the duplex. The oranges were ripe and the kids got a real kick out of walking out to the orange tree, picking a ripe orange and enjoying it right on the spot. Those were the best naval oranges I ever had.
We had so many visitors for Christmas dinner that they couldn’t fit into our small kitchen nook, so Joyce and I had to move our bed out of the bedroom, into the attached garage, and use the bedroom as a dining room to seat everyone. The bedroom had sliding patio doors that we had open to see the orange tree in all its brightly lit glory that evening. Living in California is good if you want to have lots of guests for Christmas.
Happy New Year!
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