On our drive back from friendly San Diego, where we found chocolate what defeated us, by the way, we caught sight of a Ferris Wheel and followed the Magpie Reflex. Shiny thing, where’s the next exit, there, now how do we get there, I guess we turn left, what is this place? It’s never failed us. We found streetlights decorated with stylized bows made of christmas lights along an empty curving road. We followed it to a vast dark parking lot. Upon finding the entrance, we were approached by a woman in a safety vest who told us we could go through, twelve dollars at the gate. It seems that the Del Mar racetrack decorates wildly with christmas lights and charges people to drive through where the horses would run. Over the radio they play cheerful holiday music. It was surreal. I can’t properly explain the scale. A dustbowl palm tree race-track christmas.
Our drive through had a dreamlike quality. Slowly rolling through the oval, giggling at the oddity of the situation, Billie Holiday chirping from the stereo. Fascinated by the incongruous juxtapositions of christmas and this fantastic discovery, we took pictures every twenty feet, stopping frequently to capture the newest absurdity. I love my darling, that he clicked with the display the same way I did. “This is unbelievably wierd. Let’s document, take pictures.” I can’t think of anyone I would rather have shared it with. Miles away from everything, we’ve now experienced the bizarre together.
That this may be the only festive display that some children see is a bothersome thought and I don’t do christmas. Some of the eerie lights were disturbingly innappropriate to our un-american sensibilities.
Note Santa’s sled taking off from a military air carrier.