FOSTER PARK : Roadside Tree Turns Festive Each Year

A December ritual continues along a stretch of California 33 between Ventura and Casitas Springs.

Motorists stop their cars on the freeway shoulder, walk to a lone pine tree near the Canada Larga off-ramp and hang a length of tinsel or a handwritten message in its branches.

Over the weeks, the lower portion of the tree is masked with trimmings, and a star generally appears near the top about 50 feet above the ground.

Longtime Oak View resident Ruby Blackmon, 80, admits beginning the tradition about 15 years ago when the tree was just a bush.

She keeps an eye on it each year, going out after windstorms to rehang items that blow off.

“I usually undecorate it, too, as far as I can reach,” she said.

“I sort things out and save them for the next year.”

Blackmon said that in 1976 Caltrans felled a tree closer to the pavement that she had helped trim, and the community was not pleased.

Because of this, she suspects that Caltrans crews put the star on the tree to make amends.

But her theory was quashed by Bruce Dyer, Caltrans maintenance superintendent.

“We don’t do anything about decorating it, and we don’t do anything about taking it off,” he said, “It just shows up. It hasn’t cost us any money.”

California Highway Patrol Officer Jim Utter warns that people who park on the freeway shoulder or trespass on the right of way where the tree grows risk citations.

“It’s a violation of the Motor Vehicle Code,” he said, but “don’t make me look like a bah-humbug-Christmas guy.”