Holiday lights bring a twinkle to dreary days

You know those neighbors, the ones with the lights still up. The holidays come, the holidays go, but their holiday lights stay on and on.

We've all gotten used to decorative lights -- they used to be Christmas lights -- left up all winter. They add twinkle to the gray that by February seems endless. In one Everett household, a debate over when to take lights down was settled long ago, by outside observers.

And the answer? Never. The lights stay up.

At the Johnston home, on Colby Avenue near Providence Everett Medical Center, it was a lit-up heart, rather than Christmas lights, causing a stir.

"My husband and I had arguments about this -- 'It's not Valentine's Day anymore. Turn the heart off, will you?' My husband happens to love yard art and decorating," said Barb Johnston, 53, a school counselor at Jackson Elementary in Everett.

He loves yard art, and she loves him. That's how they ended up with a tall, black metal piece of garden art. It's topped with a heart shape, and smaller figures of birds and butterflies.

Six years ago, Barb saw it at a crafts fair on Whidbey Island. She bought it for her husband's birthday.

Chuck Johnston, who'll turn 59 Friday, celebrates his birthday and Valentine's Day in tandem. "He loves to have heart-shaped cakes," Barb Johnston said.

So she gave him the yard sculpture, which she describes as "a cute little heart with birds on it -- just metal."

"And of course he embellishes it," she said. "He had to put red lighting around it."

Of course he did. This is a man whose front-yard stepping stones are in the shape of Bigfoot prints.

By the summer of 2002, Barb Johnston was putting the heat on to get her husband to take down his bright red Valentine. "I'd say, 'Turn it off, turn it off.' Finally, he said, 'OK, I'll turn it off,'" she said.

One day, not long after the heart lights went out, Barb Johnston was home reading the newspaper. Her husband, who works for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, was asleep.

"The doorbell rings," she said. "Here's a couple of people, I think it was two ladies and a man. And they say, 'We were wondering if you could please turn your heart back on?'"

Barb Johnston said the visitors told her their mother was in a heart ward at the hospital across the street. The woman had been comforted by looking down at the brightly lit heart in the Johnstons' yard.

"I told them I made my husband turn it off, and they said it had been great for their mother," Johnston said. "I had to wake my husband up and tell him -- Chuck, guess what?"

The very next day, someone dropped a thank-you card in the Johnstons' mail slot. It was addressed to "The House With the Heart."

Two years ago, Chuck Johnston suffered a pulmonary embolism. His room at Providence Everett Medical Center overlooked Colby Avenue, with his house right across the street. With the heart lit up in the yard, "he got to be the recipient," his wife said.

"It started out as an irritant," she said. Now, the heart shines for all to see, all year long.

Her husband has lived in their house since the 1970s. They met when she was living with her grandmother in the house next door, while studying for her master's degree.

"I like to say I married the boy next door," Barb Johnston said. They've been married since 1983.

At their house, it's always Valentine's Day. How many couples can say that?



Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.