Let There Be Light

"What do you think?" Steve finally asked Richard. "You want to put up a few?"

Richard mulled it over. Not yet. Too soon, he replied.

Okay, Steve said. "I won't throw them up until you throw some up."

It's how their war has always worked. It's how the whole thing started.

The Christmas of 1995, after he and Eileen moved to the neighborhood, Richard had made it a point to check out the competition next door. He had come armed with boxes of bulbs from their old townhouse in Glen Burnie.

Richard was a man who believed in doing things all the way or not at all. After a decade in construction, he had built an athletic field irrigation company from scratch.

So that first Christmas in Severna Park, when Richard looked next door and saw three paltry strands strewn along his neighbor's bushes, he couldn't help chuckling. The poor sucker wouldn't know what hit him, he thought.

What Richard didn't count on was Steve, a professional carpenter equally skilled with a toolbox, and just as stubborn when it came to competition.

Year after year, the two men slathered on the lights, trying to gain the upper hand.

Steve would bring home a seven-foot nutcracker, only to watch Richard retaliate with a life-size Santa and reindeer. Then, a few days later, Richard would come home to find the lights on his Santa flashing inexplicably. It would take him hours to find the flasher bulb that had been planted amid his tangled strands.

The men tried to enlist their children as spies, but the kids proved a bit more mature than their fathers.

Both men blew their fuses so many times they ended up installing extra circuit breakers and outlets. Electrical limitations one year forced Richard to pick between plugging in his ailing father's oxygen machine or his lights. The oxygen ultimately won, but Richard devised a way to work around his father's schedule and eke out 90 minutes a night for lights.