This was not in my neighborhood (thank Jahweh!) but rather on a quiet street in Yonkers, on the lawn of a house I serviced. It was a small house, with a not over-large front lawn, which makes all the difference.
For, crammed into this relatively small space were so many holiday tchatchkes of various kitsch and taste levels it almost made me swoon. There were 4’ plywood candy canes, plastic toy soldiers, wire-and-light angels, reindeer, snowmen, manger scenes and sleighs crammed cheek by jowl. You could barely walk to the front door. Honest, there was so much stuff on the lawn, it looked like the Invasion of the Cheap Holiday Decorations[sup]TM[/sup]. And the stuff was just put out, with no scheme or anything. “Hey, this angel fits next to Frosty and the Squirrel Nutkin family.”
It had obviously taken this couple decades to collect this aggregation of bad taste. Vintage dreck from the 50s, 60s, 70s and maybe 80s. These people hadn’t thrown away anything. I can’t imagine where they stored it the rest of the year.
Most jarring of all was the nativity scene, lovingly re-created in glorious glow-from-within plastic (I think it was highlighted by a baby spot, as well). While just behind Wise Man #2 hovered a four foot Winnie-The-Pooh, complete with “hunny” jar on his head. I went home and searched the four Gospels and the Apocrypha, but I’m blowed if I find any mention of Pooh Bear visiting Jesu Bambino.
is a brilliant idea! We could put an Easter Bonnet on him for Easter, a Pilgrim hat for Thanksgiving, an Uncle Sam hat for 4th of July. Think about it – sunbonnets, vulgar T-shirts, one of those Cheesehead hats that people wear to Green Bay Packer games… The tasteless variations are endless! I really, really want one of these!
Oh, oh! I thought of another one! We could put a King Henry the Eighth crown and cape on him and have him holding a giant turkey leg… Oh, wouldn’t that be cool?
Like many of you, we’ve also been overrun by irradiated motorized deer. I’m thinking of taking a couple out with tracer rounds.
Non-Seasonal:
Who in the hell actually belives that putting a couple of concrete lions magnificently perched at the end of their cracked sidewalk makes their casa more grand is just begging for a call from an aluminum siding salesman. The only thing that could improve this look would be to put a Finch Hatton tombstone beside them.
If you’re going to spend the money, go ahead and get Sphinxes.
Shortly before Halloween, they put up some decorations which really just freaked my kids out. Not monsters, but a five foot racoon, dressed in a red plaid suit - ala Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. The racoon is looking at a pocket watch, and holds a french horn in the other hand. Just plain freaky.
This past weekend, we discovered who the racoon was expecting. A large goose appeared, similarly dressed. We are now speculating as to what could possibly come next. A bear dressed as a cop? A weasel in a bustle?
Before the appearance of the goose, I wanted to go and move the racoon slightly closer to the house each night, so that eventually, they would open their front door and have this monstrosity looking them in the face, but just couldn’t bring myself to get that close to it.
Just remembered another one. It’s a year round “decoration”. In a neighborhood of upscale homes is one house which has a lifesize baby elephant by the driveway, a giraffe by the front walk, and a tiger on the lawn. WTF?
There’s one north of Austin, and there’s a patio furnishings store in Ft. Worth that have a bunch of concrete statues. Do give the Ft. Worth store credit, it looks like the statues are more of an attention getter than a money-maker.
Once my uncle and his new wife came up from Austin to visit us. His wife had spotted the store north of Austin and thought the life-size gorilla was really cute. ::shudder::
Don’t any of you have cement COWS? Or is it just a Hoosier thing???
We have the geese too, of course, although they are way more fun when you decapitate them and then paint the neck stub with red paint. Put a little apron on that monstrosity, why don’t ya?
But the cows are lovely–life-sized, black and white, nice and shiny lest they look like real cows. And at Christmas, what could be more festive than a Santa hat and a wreath around the neck?
Non-Christmas goodies: Lots of the aforementioned butt-in-the-air people, the plywood Shadow Man (usually Amish in these parts), and the occasional toilet full of flowers. Plastic flowers.
I know a man in my hometown that has covered his porch roof with about a million little plastic horses–the kind that used to come in Cowboy&Indian playsets. He also somehow affixed one to the hood of his truck. Go figure.
[OT]I know that house! I kinda like the dogs, though.[/OT]
There’s another house I pass on my way to work that has a dead tree out front. The owners cut most of the branches off, leaving just the really thick ones. They then nailed colorful bird houses on the top of each branch.
This "Rhymes with Orange"™ comic strip ran last year:
When I was younger, growing up in the mountains of NC, there was a certain house that we’d just have to avert our eyes from every time we were driving towards the Blue Ridge Parkway. The day after Thanksgiving would appear on this lawn, four-foot high letters proclaiming
[sub]I tried replicating the effect using Smilies for this post until I realized we were here to talk about gross displays of tastelessness, as opposed to making them. Plus my hand was cramping up from trying to get the buggering coding right.[/sub]
As for year-round tasteless lawn decor, well, nothing beats the good old Used Tire Flower Bed™. Plus, since I live amongst the tobacco farms, you can see the occasional, SUPER-SIZED Used Tractor Tire Flower Bed™
There’s a street here in Point Loma (San Diego) where a group of about half a dozen houses goes absolutely wild. There are lights strung all over the houses and trees (some of them 30 or 40 feet tall) and dozens of lawn ornaments of all descriptions. They also have huge windows in the front which are filled with Christmas scenes, including a life sized animatronic Santa hanging out with the elves in his workshop.
They also do Halloween and Easter to a somewhat lesser degree.
My favorite non-Christmas thing around here is a house with a sizable fence, including ornate pillars and a fountain and several other “sculptures” of various sorts—all completely made out of oyster shells that have been cemented together.
There’s a house in my mom’s neighborhood that has a **Half-buried Bowling-Ball-Edged Flower Bed™. I bet there are fifty of the things, all different trippy colors.
–Cheffie, who can’t believe no one laughed at his remark about the pot further up this page
Has anyone heard Lorne Elliott’s song, “March of the Lawn Art Lovers”? (or “The League of Lawn Art Lovers”–I’m not sure which is the correct title. It’s quite amusing. We found it on Audio Galaxy.
I know it well! I think (don’t know for sure) that the shell “art” is quite old, and I wonder if the person/people who created it still live there. And if not, why did the new people not rip it the heck OUT? Although it’s rather magnificent in its…I don’t even know where to go from here. Can you imagine the time it took to make that? Not to mention the gathering of the shells - well, the mind boggles. Did they have the shells just lying around? Maybe the yard was the site of a prehistoric seafood garbage dump? Because it’s so hard for me to imagine anyone making that particular creative leap in the absence of the raw materials.
Sheesh, Shirley… I’m sorry. I was just too excited to go back and double check the originator of your brilliant idea. How embarraskin.
BTW, I’m going to be in northern California over Christmas and I’m planning to hit a few “chainsaw art” places (you know, the places that sell bears and Bigfeet and such carved out of tree trunks with chainsaws) and price a life sized Buddha for my front yard.
In Baltimore, we have 34th Street in Hampden. The entire block of rowhouses decorates…even stringing lights back and forth across the street, house to house, all the way down the block. The doors and windows and all the trim and edges of the homes are lined with white lights. They all have displays in their yards, in the windows, up on the roof, everywhere.
