BY REUBEN MEES, Examiner Contributor
The weather this weekend proved to be perfect for working outside. Whether pulling summer’s final flowers and raking away rustic autumn leaves or putting away Halloween decor, nearly everyone found a way to get outdoors.
Some residents even turned their spirit toward Christmas, seizing a golden opportunity to get their exterior lights and adornments in place before the cooler temperatures and hustle and bustle of the Thanksgiving season.
Such was the case for Mike Hawkey, who spent Saturday morning busy on the front lawn of his 219 E. Chillicothe Ave. home.
But this year was a little different for the 74-year-old city man, who has lived in the 103-year-old historic home for 36 years.
Shortly after he and his wife, Diana, moved into the house in 1984, Mr. Hawkey planted a small blue spruce and decided to add a few yuletide lights.
“It was about waist high and we put 200 lights on it and thought how cute it was,” Mr. Hawkey reflected.
Over the years, the tree grew, as trees do.
It grew so big, in fact, it required a 22-foot ladder and a 22-foot pole to reach near the top.
And 200 lights just wouldn’t do either.
“Last year, I put 15,000 lights on it,” the city man said with a laugh, adding that in recent years, Pat Culp of Vital Signs provided a bucket truck free of charge to help reach the peak of what was almost surely the city’s largest outdoor Christmas tree.
“It was a labor of love,” Mr. Hawkey said. “I would get up there and curse at it and say I wasn’t going to do it again. But so many kids loved it and their parents would tell me how they grew up with it; so I had to keep doing it.”
This year, however, the impressive blue spruce that served as a symbol of the holiday season on the eastern outskirts of downtown suffered from a fungal disease that was killing it quickly.
“It was a tough decision, but we knew it had to come down,” Mr. Hawkey said.
But he wasn’t about to let the loss of the tree sour his Christmas spirit, either.
“I went out and found the biggest tree I could find,” he said as he took a break from stringing lights on the new addition to his front lawn.
It is a 9-foot Norway spruce that is not affected by the fungus that killed its predecessor, the homeowner noted.
It is not yet sturdy enough to support the burden of all 15,000 lights, but Mr. Hawkey said he expects the 3,000 or so he was planning to put on it to make a pretty impressive sight for its current stature.
But he also hopes to see the new tree shine in its full glory.
“It will be a while before this Norway spruce matches the size of the other one, but hopefully we’re around long enough that I can curse about putting the lights on it again,” Mr. Hawkey said with a laugh.