Forty years later, and Ronnie Cain still gets a charge out of telling the story of the lawn chair, the church van and the Santa suit he bought on clearance at the old Heck’s department store in Westover.
It was Christmas time, and Cain, who lives on Maple Avenue in Westover, had the house to himself.
“So, I got the idea I was gonna put on that suit and wave at the traffic,” he said, chuckling.
People in their cars tooling by on nearby Fairmont Road loved it.
They would honk the horn and roll down the window to yell out their Christmas lists.
“Next thing I know, this church van stopped,” he remembered, “and nine little kids bailed out. Liked to knock me over.”
Actually, he was knocked over, emotionally.
“Just seeing the looks on their faces,” he said. “I knew I had to keep doing this.”
He started putting up Christmas lights and decorations that following year. And more Christmas lights and decorations, after that.
And, amazingly, even more after that, in preparation of the turn of the calendar page to December.
His neighbors let him take over their yards and houses for the season.
A Yule destination, it was, for generations of families.
If you were enchanted and enthralled by Ronnie’s lights as a kid, you made sure you brought your kids and grandkids to Maple Avenue – so they could be enchanted and enthralled, too.
Facebook lit up fast Wednesday afternoon when Ronnie’s wife, Sharon, took to the network to post the news. After 39 years, the couple has decided to pull the plug on their signature light display.
“It was time,” she said, Thursday.
“Ronnie’s not getting any younger, and there’s just so much work to all this,” she continued.
“We were blessed. We just want to thank everybody. I’m talking about all our neighbors and all our volunteers and all the families. You made this possible.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said her husband, who is set to mark his 81st birthday in October, “I am starting to slow down a little.”
‘I do this little Christmas thing every year’
Carol McGraw also gets a charge out of a story she loves telling that goes back 20 years.
That was the summer when she and her husband, Dave, were moving into the house they had just bought on Maple Avenue.
They were still pulling the packing tape off boxes when their new neighbor ambled across the yard to hail a hello.
And to ask a favor.
He explained to her that he did this “little Christmas thing every year” that would require — if she didn’t mind, of course — the use of her yard for a few days in December.
His other neighbors did the same every season, he said. The people who last occupied the house she was moving into were participants also, he said.
“The kids really like it,” he said.
How could a newcomer say no to that?
Hey, he runs a few strands of lights, she thought.
Seemed appropriate, she mused, since the guy smacked of Yuletide, even in the summer.
That was her first impression: Jolly, crinkly laugh lines, to go with a somewhat roundish stature.
A clean-shaven Santa shrunk in a dryer and plunked down one house over from hers.
A new transformer under the tree?
That “little Christmas thing,” she would soon find out, was more akin to Disney World — with the high beams on.
She got her first inkling that first autumn.
“It was around September or October, and I look out and there’s Ronnie,” McGraw remembered.
“I thought, ‘That’s nice. He must decorate for Halloween, too.’ Then I looked again, and saw it was Christmas stuff. I said, ‘Oh. He really is serious.’ ”
Serious as a smoking transformer. Serious as a melted power line. With all the good intentions in the world, Cain has been responsible for both, and more than once.
“The power company never got mad,” chuckled Cain, who is versed in the art of amperage.
He retired from the coal mines, where he worked as an electrician.
When Cain hit the switch for McGraw’s first Christmas on Maple Avenue, she was a little girl, all over again.
“I said, ‘Will you look at that?’”
There was a lot to regard: Lighted paths, galore.
Lighted displays were everywhere, including her new front yard, which was really an old canvas for Cain’s annual artwork.
Look over here, and there’s fanciful Santa, whooping it up on water skis.
Look over there, and there’s another Santa, cruising in a Winnebago.
Cain, his neighbor spied, even stole a grinning Grinch, who was watching over a holiday-bedecked mailbox for letters to the North Pole.
Of course, Rudolph was right in the middle of the happy tinsel-tumult, with his red nose glowing brighter than a traffic light at the Triangle.
It was a Christmas symphony with a choir of 200,000 light bulbs. Probably more than that.
And the best part, McGraw said, were the little kids, with moms and dads, and grandmas and granddads.
“They just kept pouring in,” she said, “The line never stopped.”
Season’s Greetings down the road
“Will you look at that?”
That’s what the kid said last year, echoing McGraw from across a time-bridge.
“You got all this stuff.”
“I know,” laughed Cain. “I’ve got stuff in the basement I never even thought about putting out.”
Like his wife, he said he’ll miss the display, but he won’t necessarily miss the work.
He’ll miss all the people who enjoyed the lights and all the people who helped illuminate them.
The pizza, too. That was the traditional meal on Dec. 23, the final night of each display, that all the volunteers got to enjoy, courtesy of the Christmas couple.
“I’m a little sad, I’m not gonna lie,” he said. “But if we made some people smile, that’s good enough for me.”
No one knew that the 2021 display was going to be the last in the annals – not even Ronnie and Sharon.
Headlights were dancing and so were the eyes of babies and toddlers taking it all in.
J.R. Jenkins, who was helping park cars with his son, Cole, looked over at Cain, who is his uncle, and laughed at the unintentional rhyme that went with his observation.
“Uncle Ronnie,” he said. “He’s like an elf, himself.”
Cain, meanwhile, said he’ll put a few lights and decorations on the porch this year: “For the grandchildren.”
And there was something else.
“I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. In advance.”
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