SCARLET LETTER UPDATE

04/08/1999 at 12:00 AM EDT

Dixie Lyczewski of Sunnyside WA has a 7-foot-tall scarlet "A" in her front yard, the result of a dispute between her and her husband Tim, reports the Associated Press. The couple separated last August after 26 years of marriage, and their 20-year-old daughter Tarah built the display -- shaped like the letter "A," as in "adultery" -- using plastic irrigation pipe wrapped in red garlands. Tarah said she got the idea from the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel "The Scarlet Letter" after her father began dating and moved in with another woman before her parents' divorce was final. "We were raised with high morals," she said. "I told my dad that we'll take it down if he stops living with her." Tim Lyczewski said, "They're trying to do it to embarrass me, but they're doing a better job of embarrassing themselves ... They see it as an affair. I'm 48 years old, and I see it as a relationship."