This is true. I am not making any of it up.

Over on the highway, not too far from our house there is the biggest darned house you ever saw. Well, OK, it might not look so big in Beverly Hills, but out here in the low-rent district, it's huge.

It was built by some people who started a trash pickup business, sort of on a shoe string, and business was so good, they sold the company a few years later for a reported six million dollars.

That's when they built the house. It was a large brick with two-story-high white columns. Then they added a wing to the left and then a wing to the right. If it was on our street it would cover a whole block.

Naturally, since it was built with trash money --there is a lot of money in trash -- people in the neighborhood started calling it The Trash House. It really is a beautiful house, sitting there with a ten-acre front yard that slopes gently down to the highway. There are enough bricks in the main gate and the front fence to build a subdivision. (slight exaggeration - sorry) The concrete driveway is lined with about a hundred Bradford pear trees.

Now here is what I'm really leading up to:
These people decorate for Christmas. Maybe it's a payback to all of the people who generated enough trash to make them rich. Unless you have been to Dollywood, you have probably never seen so many lights. It isn't just the house. The front fence and the pear trees are also blazing with Christmas cheer. I'm sure it is clearly visible to astronauts in space.

So if you are in East Tennessee during the Christmas holidays, drive down Highway 11 through Loudon County. You can't miss it.

Hmmmm. I think I'll go by tonight and take a picture.
Howard