Audio By Carbonatix
Five years ago Carmen Carpentieri thought the front yard of his North Miami home looked a little too drab for Christmas, so he bought several hundred lights to decorate the trees lining his sidewalk. Two doors down the street, Ken DiGenova noticed the modest light display and decided that the following year he, too, would buy lights. Other neighbors followed. “But I never thought it would come to this,” Carpentieri says. “It’s just amazing.”
Amazing doesn’t begin to describe what Carpentieri and 30 of his neighbors have done this year to their cul-de-sac. More than 300,000 lights have transformed NE 137th Terrace, just east of Sixteenth Avenue, into a glittering fantasyland that each night attracts thousands of admirers. “And I’ll tell you what,” adds Fred Stribling, another neighbor, “we’ll do it till I die. The kids come by here and it’s just beautiful. Each year we try to make it bigger and better.”
There is no arguing that it has gotten bigger, from one house five years ago to 31 today. But it’s the 32nd house on the block that may argue things have not gotten better. “We have one Grinch,” notes DiGenova. “We just ignore him.”
Despite the lone naysayer, the rest of the block erupts into a light-hanging frenzy the day after Thanksgiving. This year it took neighbors nine days of solid work to string nearly 3000 strands in the canopy of leaves and branches that overhangs the street. At night the effect is that of driving through a never-ending sea of stars. In addition, many of the homeowners decorate their front yards with elaborate displays — from candy canes to a Miami Dolphins logo created from tiny aqua bulbs.
The task of hanging the lights was made easier this year thanks to Southern Bell. Carpentieri and DiGenova both work for the telephone company and persuaded their bosses to donate a special truck to help hang the lights. The City of North Miami also lent them a truck. Carpentieri says when another Southern Bell employee — who doesn’t live on the street — discovered what the truck was going to be used for, he volunteered to operate it on his own time. “A lot of us take our vacations to do this,” DiGenova adds.
Each neighbor is responsible for buying the lights, at a cost of about eight dollars for a strand of 300. They also have to pay the added cost of electricity for the lights in their yard. For the six weeks the lights are up — from late November until January 6 — it raises each household’s electric bill by about $50, DiGenova estimates. The lights go on about 6:00 p.m. and are supposed to be turned off, usually by automatic timer, around 11:15 p.m., but DiGenova admits that occasionally the lights on some houses stay on longer.
And for one local charity, the longer the lights stay on, the more it benefits. Drawn by the lights, car after car rolls down the street, past neighbors and volunteers holding out baskets into which they can drop money if they wish. Last year the light show raised more than $12,000 for the Health Crisis Network, which earmarked these funds to help children with AIDS. This year neighbors expect even more to be collected.
“We have a good time,” Carpentieri offers, standing off to the side of the street with his neighbors. “It’s like a party for us. This is how we spend our evenings, watching cars go by, watching the kids smile.” One neighbor dresses as Santa Claus and rides up and down the street on a bicycle. “He becomes Santa,” Carpentieri laughs. “He’s usually very quiet and reserved, but when he puts that suit on, he becomes a completely different person. He really does become Santa.”
And as Santa whizzes by them on his bicycle, residents hand out candy to the kids and an additional treat for a few select visitors. “There were just so many people who came by last year with dogs we said we just had to do Milk Bones this year,” smiles DiGenova. “So that’s what we are doing.”
In addition to the money raised, Carpentieri and DiGenova proudly point out that the light display has brought the entire block closer together. “This has always been a very nice neighborhood,” DiGenova says of a street dominated by young to middle-age homeowners. “Everybody was friendly to each other before. Now it’s incredible. We’re a family.”
And like most families, 137th Terrace has its outcasts.
The house is easy to spot — a black hole in an otherwise swirling galaxy of lights. “In the beginning we thought it was a nice touch to decorate the property with lights,” explains Lester Jensen, a general contractor from Spain who, along with his wife Magdalena, participated last year for the first time. “But each year it causes more and more traffic. The situation is totally out of hand. The lights go late into the night. They bring tour buses down the street. I said to myself, ‘Why should I put up with that?’ This is a residential neighborhood. We have to keep our windows closed because of the smell of the car fumes. There is trash in the street. And you have drunkards screaming, ‘Merry Christmas!’ until midnight.”
“We really enjoyed it the first year,” adds Magdalena, an architect from Italy. “We tried to talk to our neighbors before Thanksgiving but they didn’t want to hear any objections. Now, because we didn’t decorate, half the block won’t say hello to us. It’s a pity, it really is.”
Social pressure exists, they contend, to put up the lights. “I know I’m not the only one on the block who didn’t want to put up lights,” says Lester Jensen, who has lived on the block seven years. “Others felt pressured, too.”
DiGenova counters that no one has ever been forced to hang lights. He and the other neighbors say they know it causes a major inconvenience for everyone on the block. (After dark, for example, leaving the house for a quick trip to the supermarket is virtually impossible.) But given the response of drive-through viewers from all over Dade County, as well as city officials, Jensen and his wife are likely to suffer for many holiday seasons to come. Earlier this year the City of North Miami rewarded the block’s residents for their efforts by renaming the street — 137th Terrace is now known as Enchanted Place.
