Jefferson octogenarian still delights in display
JEFFERSON TWP — Ask Ernie Taylor, 80, who helps him put up his 10-foot tall animated Christmas display and accompanying miniature amusement park, and a pair of normally laughing eyes will turn deadly serious.
“The only person who puts up the tree in this house is me,” Taylor said. “There's no such thing as help with this.”
Holly Taylor Mead corroborated her father's claim.
“When we were kids, we weren't allowed to touch it,” she said from 15 feet away.
Taylor's display, in the living room of his Mushrush Road home, is comprised of seven round platforms that vary in size from large at the very bottom to small on top. The platforms, which are about a foot apart, replicate the shape of a huge Christmas tree.
This is the second year Taylor has used the wooden “tree” that a friend of Mead's made for him.
Each platform is covered with “snow” before Taylor — and only Taylor — places about 80 ceramic buildings, miniature trees, horse and sleigh complete with riders and myriad other features on each platform.
The buildings and other holiday accoutrements are not added willy nilly.“The bottom is the business district, the second and third levels are residential with people walking in the park, the fourth level is houses with a church with a big Nativity scene, the fifth and sixth are residential, and on top is the clock tower,” Taylor said.The business district includes a toy store, bingo hall, Shorty's Diner and other tiny shops.The residential platforms include churches, people bundled up against the Christmastime cold and other Christmas scenes. Many have moving or audible features.Beside the bottom platform is an entire mini amusement park with working rides.
Two-inch long bumper cars with drivers race around haphazardously, crashing into one another on simulated snow. Delighted children and parents are mounted on horses in an ornate carousel or seated on cars in a moving Ferris wheel, tiny skaters whiz around on the “ice” at a skating rink, holiday partiers cut a rug at a dance hall and animals cavort in the park's circus tent.“This is really very small,” Taylor said. “It used to be three or four times bigger than this.”Taylor explained that up until two years ago, he drove his pickup truck to property he owns on Green Manor Drive to cut down a 40-foot long needle pine. He then cut the top 14 feet off and drove it back to the house, dragged it through the backyard and into place near a large window in the living room, which boasts a vaulted ceiling.A huge Christmas village on the floor in front of the tree was included back in those days. Taylor also added natural features by perusing his yard for weeds and brush that looked like Christmas trees.“The buildings back then were plastic, and he had local businesses in there, like Gumto's Greenhouse,” Mead said.Taylor figures he began adding ceramic Christmas village buildings in the 1980s, but he can't say how much the entire display is worth.“We bought a few (ceramic buildings), but most of them were Christmas presents,” he said. “When we did the big layout, there were 90 buildings.”<iframe width="100%" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ML954U9av_o" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>Mead said while he has been putting up the display for 50 years, a stay in the hospital one year meant the rest of the family was responsible for the task.“They didn't do it very well,” Taylor said.It now takes Taylor about a week to erect the display, as he is getting older and recently battled throat cancer and the exhausting treatment that went with it.“There are many reasons I do it, from the religious aspect to the family tradition,” he said. “It's so fun to see the kids' faces when they see it.”Having grown up during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Taylor recalls the lean times when even meals were hard to come by in his childhood home in Middlesex Township.“But we always had a tree with a train and village underneath it,” he said. “To me, it's just natural to do it.”His first huge display was in 1969, when he built the Jefferson Township home where he and his wife still live.
Taylor normally takes the display down and returns every house, shop and ride to its original box sometime in March.“Or when I get sick of looking at it,” he said.His two small poodles don't bother the display or its moving parts, but the cat occasionally walks through the lowest level.“You know how cats are,” Taylor said. “They do it because they can.”Taylor, who was well known in years past as the “barbecue chicken man” at many local fairs and festivals, said he looks forward to setting up his elaborate display each year.“It's Christmas!” he said. “That's why I do it.”
