Every year around Christmas I think about buying the big ladder. I envision stringing lights of various colors and shapes all over the house and yard; draped from the gutters, dotted inside tree branches, wrapped around the chimney, a perfect geometry of light and color aligned brightly with the companion lights in the front yard. To make this happen I need to reach up to the 20 foot gutters and tree branches and to do this I need what I do not have, I need the big ladder. Technically, this is called an extension ladder, a ladder that extends to 28 feet, allowing you to reach up to the highest heights and hang the brightest brights of extra festive-y holiday lights. It is the thing you need to do the job. But I will not buy the big ladder.
The big ladder is expensive, could run you anywhere between $250-$350, more if you get all Restoration Hardware exclusive, cheaper if you want to comb the used marketplace and take your life in your hands rung by rung until finally one of ’em pops loose and falls to the concrete below and that’s how you discover why that guy sold it for $50. The big ladder is very long, and does not easily transport. Even when not fully extended it measures longer than the inside of any vehicle you own unless you have a pickup truck which you don’t have because you don’t work in construction, landscaping or regularly frequent large open parcels of land. How do you even get the big ladder home from the big ladder store without paying even more for a delivery charge or borrowing someone’s truck just one last time please again?
The big ladder cannot be easily stored or hidden. To own the big ladder is to embrace the fact that the big ladder will dominate your available storage areas, possibly be clipped onto the side of your house with giant hooks or rest enormously in the backyard leaning up against a fence. This is where the big ladder will spend most of its days. You will see the big ladder all the time, quietly dominating the garage or slowly gathering deadly coatings on its rungs during the slippery moisture of spring. Here the big ladder will mock you. It will say “silly, frivolous person. Spending all that money on me, the big ladder you use twice per year to put up and take down a few ropes of colored lights.” Every time you take out the garbage it will be there, decorating the exterior, slowly losing its value outside in the elements.
The big ladder is unwieldy. Massive and unbalanced, it is moved around dangerously on your shoulders, just like a carrying a helicopter. A window will break, a car will get dented or scratched, a mailbox decapitated. There are no instructions with the big ladder, you are on your own to master its necessary nuances. Extending the extension can require some knowledge of ladder history, magic or having uncomfortable conversations with your neighbor Bill watching from his deck, hollering instructions, making hand gestures and loudly wondering why you don’t understand until finally he comes over, shows you how to extend the ladder but then puts it back in the non-extended position and walks back to his deck leaving you prove again why you are unworthy of big ladder ownership.
And so the holiday light display at our house does not live very high off the ground. I take the six foot ladder out there and string the lights through the tree branches, above the garage door, all around the front entrance. Draping from the gutters and wrapping the chimney will have to wait until I get the big ladder. And even if I finally take a deep breath call up my friend Contractor Tom and talk him into letting me borrow his ladder, I will need to confront the fact that I don’t even have enough lights needed to create the impressive light display. Nor do I have the plan to strategically place lights for maximum holiday effect. But the house looks festive and bright, and there’s a nice tree in the window you can see from the street and when you turn all the other lights out, sit with your glass of neat bourbon by the fire? You could do worse.
