Like many of you, I have a holiday tradition of setting up a “Christmas village.” It’s an idyllic place that, in many ways, bears a resemblance to Forest Park. This year I decided to make it a more realistic representation of our village.
For example, I usually blanket my village with fresh-fallen snow. This year, I cleared the sidewalks with tiny bobcats and plowed the streets curb-to-curb. I even threw down a little rock salt. Then I added a thin layer of fast food containers, beer bottles and plastic grocery bags atop the snow, since that’s what I wake up to every morning.
Most of this litter is found in the “city” section of my village. This is where the shops, post office and firehouse are located. The “country” section is home to the lighthouse, windmill and a farmhouse. But why not imitate Forest Park’s zoning laws and put the rustic barn across the street from the swanky ice-skating rink.
This rink is so upscale, the skaters can actually skate. I mean, the stately well-dressed couple used to skate. Apparently they’re too old to move anymore. Now they stand in the middle of the rink, while the young mother whizzes around them pushing her kid in a stroller that’s equipped with skates.
There’s also a low-tech rink in the seedy section of town — a mirror actually — where the three skaters are stuck in skating poses but don’t actually move. This rink was lit by one of my old fashioned gas streetlights but I replaced all of these with LED lights to make the village brighter and more energy efficient.
These lights shine on the village’s six businesses. Two of these are Irish pubs: a small one that could pass for Duffy’s and a two-story ale house the size of Doc Ryan’s. There are two music stores, just like Kagan & Gaines and American Music World. There’s also an independent bookstore as a stand-in for Centuries & Sleuths.
There’s a grocery store with a full-time butcher, like Ed’s Way. There’s a Christmas tree lot, like the one next to Portillo’s. I don’t see how they can stay in business, now that they’ve lost their two most loyal customers. They were a young couple who hauled away a fresh tree every year until they suffered a tragic fall on the hardwood. Losing them reduced the village’s population from 20 to 18.
Of these inhabitants, two are altar boys, seven are skaters (if you count the baby). Two are dads. One dad builds a snowman with his two boys. The other dad is less active. He sits on a bench, next to his sedentary son, who is reading a book. There are no less than four carolers. I wish there were more carolers in Forest Park. I also wish that all of my townspeople weren’t white.
There’s no crime in my village, which is a good thing because there’s no police station. There’s also no traffic. I think it’s because I added the Blue Line and Green Line trains this year. The trains even make tape-recorded announcements, like “Doors open on your left at Harlem,” “Doors closing,” and the ever-popular “This is Forest Park, as far as this train goes. All passengers must leave the train.”
There’s only one house in my village. It’s huge, completely out of scale with the rest of the village. I don’t know how the Zoning Commission approved it. There’s a cathedral that dominates downtown, like St. John’s and a small chapel that could be a stand-in for St. Paul’s. There’s also a baby lying in a manger.
What’s he doing there?
