The Hanukkah Bush

My house in Newton is full of history from our life, since my folks throw nothing out. Items that are no longer in service often get relegated to the basement, though there is also several large closets and crawl spaces too. I often chide my folks about the amazing amount of crap thats gathering more and more dust with each passing year.

When we were very little, my mom asked my brother and I if we would rather do presents on Hanukkah or Christmas, and like good little jews we said Christmas. So my dad, the physicist/engineer builds this clever little "electric tree" which we bring out every Christmas eve. This year, after retrieving it and plugging it in, I remarked that several of the lights were not lighting up. My dad opened up the "tree" and took out a bunch of seriously old colored light bulbs that are certainly no longer produced.
My mom looked at the lights, disappeared into the basement for three minutes, and returned with two small boxes of 30 some year old color light bulbs.

My dad replaced the bad light bulbs and the Hanukkah bush lit up withs its former glory for the first time in many a year. It looked spectacular.



Then my brother Doug looks at me and says: "And that's what the basement is for."

Brilliant.

I've started a new tradition of going through the house, and wrapping up a 20+ year old relic for my dad. This year it was a blue roll of toilet paper (complete with toilet reading lists printed on it) which had been sitting on the bathroom window for over 20 years.