Friday My Town Shoot-Out: Dressed for Christmas

The idea of the My Town Shoot-Out is to post photos of your local community every Friday. This week's assignment was chosen by The Town Blogger Team.

All photos taken in Corvallis, Oregon.

Downtown Corvallis is resplendent with little white lights and nice nutcracker characters on light poles; it would have made an elegant set of photos. Especially at night.

But that's not the place you would go if you had a car full of 5-year olds; nope, the first place you would head for is the Pepsi Bottling Company, whose president is the vibrant Corvallis philanthropist Mario Pastega. I had some fun wandering around in broad daylight last week:

Mario's wife Alma, who died last year at age 90, had the idea many years ago of decorating the grounds for Christmas with hand-painted figures.

Each year she added to the collection, and people chipped in to help.

Company employees start putting everything up in early November. There are hundreds of figures lit at night, and piped-in music while lines of cars slowly drive the winding route through the parking lots. Thousands of folks do the tour each year.



So. Go through these photos fast; think of it as a flip book! That way you won't notice when I occasionally give in to the overwhelming desire for irony. (It's just that when you have a ninja turtle coming between Cinderella & the fairy godmother, irony happens.)













































OK, I know, this isn't Christmas (not like the three little pigs, Donald Duck, ET, or much of what you just zipped through) but these gigantic bales of smashed Pepsi cans were so amazing. I just wanted you to see them. There must be a BILLION cans.

Next week I'll just put up one photo, promise.