Holiday lights and high school

Today's Holidailies prompt:  "Your favorite holiday lights."

I think that holiday lights are possibly my favorite part of the holiday season.  I love when the lights go up in the trees and on the light poles.  Typically, they go up in October, while the weather is still nice, and it always makes me smile, because that's really the first sign that the holidays are coming.

When I was a kid, on Christmas Eve, we would go to my grandparents' house, and after dinner, all the grandkids would pile into someone's minivan and we would go look at Christmas lights.  And then, by the time we got back, Santa had been there and brought presents!  Of course, I think the Santa thing started after we were all old enough to get what was really going on, but either way, it was a fun part of holiday tradition.

For years, in the town where I went to high school, one man was known for his holiday decorations.  He would put out crazy amounts of lights and moving creations.  One year, I believe there was a rocket that "blasted off" and then returned to land.  This man was also the Driver's Ed instructor.  He taught behind the wheel lessons for years and only just recently retired.  I'm not sure how long he did it, but I do know that he taught some of my friends' parents how to drive, so he hit at least two generations of students.  By the time I was in his class, it seemed that perhaps he had stopped caring about what he was supposed to teach.  Oh, we definitely got the behind the wheel lessons we needed.  But rather than practice certain skills over and over, we would run errands with him.  With a January 10 birthday, that meant that I drove with him through the holiday season.  We bought a lot of holiday decorations during that time.  At some point, he purchased a three-foot-tall Wakko doll (from the Animaniacs).  I think the plan was to use it in the holiday decorations, but instead, Wakko was seatbelted in the back seat of the Driver's Ed car, and if you were riding along (we drove in pairs, and one person would drive and one person would sit in the back and "observe"), you got to sit with Wakko.

I distinctly remember one day, my job was to drive slowly up and down the streets of the town to see what sorts of holiday decorations people were putting up so he could be sure that he still had the best display in town.  Of course, it was daylight, so we weren't getting the full effect, but it was clear that no one else had an 8 foot Santa on their roof, so as always, he came out on the top of the "Holiday Decorations" list.