Wally glanced away from the bar as he stopped at the crossing of old seventy-six. Two evergreens had been planted at this end of the circle when he was in high school by an Eagle Scout. At some point in the last dozen years, someone had strung lights on the trees and never removed them. They glowed from the inside of the trees like the ghosts of Christmas Trees Past. “It’s a small town. Probably nobody sees a point taking the lights down when they still work.”

Not far from where I grew up was a town right off the interstate. In the middle on one of the off ramp cloverleaves was a pine tree. One year the town put lights around one of those trees.

And never took them down.

Those lights were up for at least a decade before somebody cut the tree down. Of course the tree kept growing and the lights didn’t so about the second or third year the tree looked like it was glowing and by year five or six you could see the outline of the old tree inside the current one. It was hilarious and much remarked upon in local media. Which is probably why it got cut down. Now they just put up an inflatable snowman which just doesn’t have the same pizzazz.