Classic Hifi Care

One more item old Greg should put on his list of things he shouldn't mess with......

We have a pre-lighted Christmas tree. One of those good kind you don't have to mess with stringing lights. We really liked this fake tree. It folded up and stored easily. I could have it set up and lit in about 15 minutes. It stands up well, the cats don't knock it over. Even the fat cat can get up in the tree and it won't fall down. He knocks the balls off, but the tree still stands.

Last year, about halfway thru the season. one string of lights went out. No problem, says I. How hard can that be? If I can fix a Stereo Theater, why wouldn't a single strand of Christmas light be a big deal? Yeah. I've been wrong before.

I couldn't really troubleshoot with all the decoarations on, so I waited until this moring. I got out my trusty meter and went to work. I found the problem in the first light socket after the plug. The two stands are powered up, with the power split in the first light socket. I cut the socket out and found that one strand is grounded with a fibre optics type setup. One of the wires doesn't have stranded wire, just a bunch of stuff that looks like fibreglass. No, it's not asbestos. Some type of fibre optics stuff. Anyway, after I "Fixed" the lights, I had two dead strands instead of one. The whole top half of the tree was dead. Bummer.

So I trots myself down to Wally World and bought a six-foot strand of Christmas lights. I removed the dead strand, rewired the still-working strand, then incorporated the new strand, using the retainers of the broken strand. Viola! It works. Sometimes, a man's gotta know his limitations. Jeez.....

My tree went up today. It's the tree my mom and dad bought the Christmas before I was born... I've never had a different one.

Dad used to assemble it and we'd watch it "grow". Today. I put it together (53rd Christmas for it) and dad supervised... I think he handed over the honor about 30 years ago. He and mom still have the final say.

Christmas records on the Fisher 500B, a glass of wine or 2, ornaments from my family and even some from the original owners of the house...

Can't not put up the tree... in 5 weeks, after Russian Christmas, I'll be ready to burn it but it goes back in the same box from 1968, in the basement ready for another year...

Wish I looked as good as that "deleted" tree... it hasn't aged!

We are putting up two trees this year. The one I fixed and the new one we got to replace it. I guess I'm so good at Christmas light repair, the wife's friend is bringing me her broken lights. Her husband shouldn't be cheated out of the fun of repairing lights.......

I love a live tree and until 2 yrs ago we always cut down a 6 ft specimen, always Scotch pine as from childhood, until they got hard to find, then typically a Douglas fir. I'd bring it in after cutting 1" off the bottom, put it in the stand then add the water to it. My wife would do the lights and ornaments, but hates stringing the old C-7 incandescent strings as the needles always bothered her skin, so we got a 4' silver tree with while mini-lights and a rotating color wheel, so '50s. She added small silver ball ornaments, andI must admit it does look pretty as it changes colors every 5 seconds or so. After the Holidays we can drop a large garbage can trash bag over it, take it to basement storage, then next year bring it up, pull off the bag, plug it in... and voila! So easy, but boy do I miss the live tree!

I'm kinda on the other spectrum of putting up a tree. I haven't set one up in over 25 years. I live alone and just don't have the interest in all the decorating. I even bought the Light-o-Rama kits years ago, and have quite a bit invested in those which I used to light up the front of the house and yard. A couple years ago I thought why am I doing this and stopped. This past fall I had a new roof and gutters installed and thought I will not go on the roof again to string up the lights. Each string of lights was connected to it's own channel on the LOR controllers and it was computer controlled. The neighbors liked the display, but I felt it got long in the tooth. I only had two songs synchronized (Of course one was the "Wizards of Winter" by Trans Siberian Orchestra). To do a song properly, it really takes a couple of weeks to create the show. Everything I had was LED and even those would stop working as water would get into the sockets and rust out the connections. I even put the display on a Kill-o-watt meter and found I used about 13.00 in electricity for the month or so I had the display running from 5PM to 11PM every night. I appreciate everyone that loves the season, it isn't the fun time it used to be for me. Now, half of my front porch is taken up for storage of lights and extension cords for the displays.

I do like looking at Christmas displays, but don't have the incentive to put mine up. It was so much better when I would take my Grandmother for a car ride and we would drive all over the twin cities looking at them, sometimes up to 5 hours worth. I remember those days fondly, that was over 25 years ago.

Steve

My dad used to put lights on the bushes in front of the porch. One year we came back from midnight mass and all the bulbs were stolen... that was it for that.

We used to do icicle lights on the porch but that was a PITA. One string would go out, they'd freeze on the gutters then we had to take them down IF it got a little warm in January. Nope... now the wreath is battery operated. I'm not running cords all over the place.