Extra, Extra, Read All About It - Christmas Light Thieves Apprehended!

In this time of festive Christmas decorations adorning homes everywhere, I harken back not to hear the angels sing, but to my Dad's battles with the Christmas Light Thieves.

My father, when he was still with us, was always big on Christmas lights for our house. He would put them on all of the bushes in the front yard and on the house itself. Unfortunately, someone would keep taking bulbs out of the strings of lights. At first this not only annoyed, but confounded my dear ol' Dad. Confounded until he found evidence of light bulbs being smashed on the ground around the neighbourhood. Someone was getting a kick out of the popping sound they made when thrown on the ground. A lesser man may have decided that this was just the cost of doing business in the house decorating department, but my father was a man of action.

How do you catch a Christmas light bulb thief? It is simply really. You string up fishing line criss-crossing the yard and attach one end to a bell inside your bedroom. Then in the middle of the night when the thieves come on their rounds, they can't see the near invisible fishing line and ding-a-ling, you spring into action. This plan also requires you to have the skill to quickly get into your clothes and run outside, something Dad was adept at. He was able to track the ne'er-do-wells to what was known as the "Newspaper Shack", where the teenage boys who delivered the morning paper got their stack of broadsheets to deliver early each day. It was these employees of the local paper who were the culprits. And the light bulb crime spree was brought to an end by the efforts of one fan of Christmas.

Somewhere ex-paper boys are sitting around a bar drowning their sorrows and telling the tale of the time their promising careers in the journalism industry were crushed by some sports fisherman who tracked them down for stealing his Christmas lights.