LOS ANGELES — It comes in handy having your own construction company when you are as driven as Nick Resich is about his holiday decorations.
Resich has been using some heavy equipment and his construction expertise to get his holiday lights up. He is so enthusiastic, in fact, some have dubbed him the Clark Griswold of the neighborhood.
“It’s kind of like as many lights and as obnoxious as you can get, right?” Resich said. “Just make it explode.”
We all know Chevy Chase’s Griswold character from the classic National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (Warner Bros., 1989), and while Resich is just as ambitious as Griswold, he seems a lot more capable. He definitely knows how to drive an industrial sized forklift.
Resich said he has been having trouble finding enough lights this year, maybe due to this year’s supply chain slowdowns, but this is not slowing him down.
“Nah, it's pretty much my thing,” said Resich. “It's, you know, grab a ‘daddy cocktail’ and make your way through the nights putting them up.”
Resich has been piling on the holiday cheer like this for about six years, but he and his family just recently moved into a new house and so are still working out the kinks, and Resich will have to install a dedicated electrical circuit to handle all the lights without tripping the fuses.
Meghan Resich says over the years Nick's work has become a real neighborhood favorite.
“He's been known to get thank you notes in the mailbox, Starbucks gift cards,” said Meghan Resich. “I mean, people write little notes, ‘Thank you so much for doing this.’ It's cute.”
But Meghan, who handles the interior decorations for the house, said Nick was already feeling behind on the project, which takes several days to complete.
“We kind of got to get this going,” she said. “The pressure is on right now.”
As the sun started to set, it was clear Resich was going to be working through the night to finish, and after working until 8 a.m. the next morning, it was starting to look a lot like the holidays here.
But as Resich surveyed his handiwork the following evening, he said he was not totally happy. It is not enough, yet.
“Hmm…Guess the unicorns didn’t do it,” he said, slightly dejectedly. “I guess we need more.”
“He just wants it to be brighter,” Meghan added with a laugh.
So, it was time to get back to work and try to turn that volume up to 11.
For 5-year-old Frazier it was all smiles as she danced through the animal menagerie in the yard.
However, when you are a perfectionist like Nick Resich, there is always room for improvement, and more lights.
“I'm kind of happy," he said. "But we will make sure that there's more Christmas explosion.”