How many stories start with, “There’s a guy near my house who….”?
Well, I have one of those, and as you see by the pictures here, it is an interesting tale.
There is this dentist who lives a mere few miles from my home and comes to decorate his big corner lot and ranch house for every holiday. He began by outfitting his domicile and front lawn with every conceivable Halloween nasty you can think of; mannequins (the guy is very fond of fake females especially) dressed as “Freddy Krueger” and “Jason Voorhees,” giant skeletons (many more than what you see here), long strings of lights, dry ice, various screams and other scary sounds emanating from speakers set all over, sheets fashioned like ghosts swinging from this front yard trees, a huge purple spider sitting on his roof. He was the Halloween attraction—or scourge—depending on how you came to see him stopping traffic for a slow jam of cars driving by to take a look and passengers snapping pictures, people clogging up the sidewalks overwhelming the usual quiet and never-crowded neighborhood. He even hired kids to dress up as “Leatherface” from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, running around wielding chainsaws at the crowd or witches and zombies stepping up silently to tap onlookers on the shoulder. He even had to hire a traffic cop to man the corner on the weekends.
Then he began to add doodads, inflatables, and lights for Christmas. Then it was those female mannequins dressed like Playboy bunnies for easter. This was when the trouble began.
Some of his neighbors didn’t seem to like the lingerie-dressed fake cuties, and when the guy outfitted his ‘girls’ again, in pretty much the same way come the Fourth Of July, one of his female neighbors came onto his property and cut a mannequin in half.
The case that came from this is still pending.
As you see from these pictures, he has outfitted his house this March for…St. Patrick’s Day? Yes, there are some shamrocks in the display, as you see, but the skeleton and the girls? The bear? Flamingoes?
Sure, one could claim that all of this ballyhoo is an eyesore, that it brings too many pedestrians and cars to this little cul de hacky sac of an area, that maybe half-dressed female mannequins are in bad taste. Still, I love this guys chutzpah, the way he pisses off as many people as he thrills, and that all this is happening a mere five minutes from my home.
Ah, Jersey.
