By Mark Howell

 

Our decorative season is off to a blazing start with two Key West houses in particular.

 

At 600 Elizabeth and visible on Southard Street, the home of Bob and Fran Decker now sports a fiery fishing tableau incorporating up to 25,000 light-emitting-diode bulbs.

 

For the past seven years, Bob has been putting together this kind of Christmas-lights scene to cover the entire front of his two-story dwelling at a minimum of expense.

 

“I try not to buy anything, “ he told Konk Life this week.

 

His very first effort featured 12 dolphins, each animated by nautical controllers and all stitched together by hand. The following year he created a scene featuring a snowman in a rowboat. After that it was Santa Claus catching a fish.

 

This year Fran came up with the idea of Santa in a boat chasing a grouper catching up to a little red fish to devour.

 

For his previous scenes it was hard to find color LED bulbs locally and Bob had to go online to do so. But this year, Home Depot is carrying an entire line of them and Bob’s just about depleted its inventory.

 

It takes two months to create the scene that is now visible for three blocks.

 

“It’s a labor of love,” he says.

 

Just a short stroll away, at 620 Angela Street, is another lit-up house that’s been awarded $500 as this year’s first-prize winner of the Key West Holiday Light contest.

 

It’s the work of Sheree Nantkes, who’s residing here for the season and has brought a whole bunch of snow to Key West.

 

For example there are these two washable snowmen made of plaster of Paris by the young daughter of a neighboring family — who’s never ever seen snow — in what Sheree calls a “group effort.”

 

“And it’s all quite appropriate,” she says of the whole wild light show. “Rudolph visited the Island of Misfit Toys, after all.”

 

On our visit to this sidewalk wonder we also encountered another neighbor, Clyde the cat, asleep amid the lights. And we met up with Sheree’s son, the amazing Kyle, a pre-teenager who’s up to speed on all the phenomena of super-physics such as black holes and has actually met the great Stephen Hawking.

 

Who knows whom you’ll to meet in the neighborhoods of Key West?

 

And at Christmas time, it’s always so much lighter and brighter.

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