Driving in the midnight snow with the top down and a tree stuffed into the back seat. That’s how they remember him, the few that saw him, accidentally, sneaking in as they were in the wee hours, from a holiday card game or a girlfriend’s apartment. Christmas Eve, back then, when the winters were colder and lit with fat colored bulbs. A phantom sliding along in the streets, leaving Christmas trees on the porches of shut-ins. It happened for some years in the neighborhood and then faded away, but with a resonance, leaving many of us, years later, still peeking out at our porches each Christmas morning, to see if something was left there overnight…

-Danny Grosso