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So when Matt Riggs, who lives on the block with his wife Kerry, found out his neighbor across the street was struggling with depression in December of 2020, he decided to spread some holiday cheer. Riggs, who had been having a hard time himself during the pandemic, hung his Christmas lights early because he needed some joy. He managed to get one of the strands across the street, over a tree, and connected it to his neighbor’s house.
Soon, house by house followed, connecting their lights until the entire block was lit. Riggs tells CNN they all did it again this year, with one neighbor making a metal sign by hand that reads “Love lives here.”
“I was decorating for the holidays and I was a little bit early. It was actually before Thanksgiving, but it was such a dark time for all of us. I really didn’t want to wait anymore,” Riggs recalls of last season. “I wanted to go ahead and get things lit up. So, I was climbing the tree and running lights up in my tree and I wanted to see if I could get them to go across the street. And I was so excited when I did get them to go across the street and stay lit.”
Riggs’ neighbor Leaba Commisso was next.
“Once Matt did it, I talked to my across the street neighbor and I was like, ‘Hey, let’s do it too,'” she says. “It’ll bookend the block, you’ll drive through one light and then when you leave the block, you’ll drive out of it. But it’s a lot harder to hang those lights than one would imagine.”
That’s where Tom Desert came in. He’s the handy neighbor who soon figured out how to rig one strand after another, making a canopy over the block and planting anchors in each lawn to hold the strands in place.
“Once there was a job to be done, Tom came out and he was helping us because it’s really hard. They’re heavy, those lights,” Commisso says. “Tom was able to get our lights up and then we were like, everybody let’s do it. “
She says a bunch of neighbors got in the car and “cleared out Home Depot.”
A message of love
Neighbor Melissa DiMuzio,…
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Source : cnn
