Palm trees get the holiday treatment

Mathis Winkler

NEWPORT BEACH -- People driving past Clark Brooks’ Kings Place home

might not notice right away why they’re bound to do a double take.

Overall, the holiday lights on the house, where the 16-year-old

Newport Harbor High School sophomore lives with his family, resemble

thousands of others around the city.

White icicle lights hang from the bungalow’s flat roof, where two

reindeer made of white lights bow their heads as if searching for food.

Colorful and white lights blink in the shrubs in the frontyard, and

strings of red lights wrap around the trunks of four palm trees.

But there’s more.

Three years ago, Brooks said he began to wonder why no one had ever

tried to add lights to palm leaves.

“When you come around the corner, you see some lights at the house and

then just this big pole,” Brooks said Friday, referring to the lit palm

tree trunks. “You can’t really tell what it is.”

Brooks raided the closets for wire coat hangers and started to shape

them in a way that would allow him to wrap around lights and attach the

construction to the leaves.

A single coat hanger didn’t really do the job, and over the past two

years, he’s tried to perfect the device.

In about two hours, he can straightened several coat hangers, add

cross wires for stabilization and wrap the lights around the frame, which

looks like a snow shoe.

Brooks said some neighbors have expressed an interest in his

invention. While he hasn’t explored the possibility of marketing his palm

leaf lighting fixture, he said he’d probably charge $15 a leaf.

Although he plans to become a pilot or a model maker for the movies

when he’s done with school, Brooks has already gathered some business

experience in the past.

In fifth grade, he sold parachute men made of trash bags and water

bottles to his classmates, a shrewd move that soon ended with the

principal’s disapproval.

As a high school freshman, Brooks made $350 by selling insects at

school, forcing the administration to come up with a rule that prevented

the sale of insects to students, he said.

But before his latest invention will be ripe for marketing, Brooks

said he’ll still have to make some improvements.

“See how thin this is?” he asked, pointing to the wire. “At Home

Depot, they have three-sixteenth-inch rods.”

And if he can figure out a way to solder thinner wires to a thicker

one in the center, the next generation of palm leaf lights might start to

look more like the real thing, Brooks said.