Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Volunteers sought for lighting display

When the Forest Festival is over this year, Tambra Childres, city recorder/treasurer says its time to get those Christmas displays up "so we can comply with the rules from Holiday Trail of Lights."

Childres said the first group to set up displays will meet at 8 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 6, at City Hall.

Childres said she will have the outline drawn on what to put in which area. None of the volunteers, she assures, will be dealing with electricity.

"We will be assembling and installing Christmas tree displays. We are required to have all of our light displays on from 5-11 p.m., Nov. 17 - Dec. 27, by the 2004 Arkansas Trail of Holiday Lights, so we need to get them up as quickly as possible," she said. "We are not trying to minimize Thanksgiving, but rather comply with the Trail of Lights rules."

Childres said Gurdon is one of 72 Arkansas cities on the trail. The Gurdon City Hall received a copy of what would be in the brochure on Aug. 16. The displays will be distributed statewide.

Gurdon and Arkadelphia are listed under the Ouachita area.

"Our street department will do a lot with the lighting display," she said. "But we are looking for all of the volunteers we can get."

Cost of the lights will be kept to a minimum. Entergy will supply labor free to install receptacle boxes for each lighting set. Bobby Pilgreen, local electrician, already constructed the boxes. South Central Arkansas Electric Co-op volunteers time to install the actual lights on poles.

Street Superintendent Jim Caldwell said the displays had been here for sometime. Examples include: a new Nativity scene down the medium in town; new lights for City Hall; a five-horse carnival and Santa express train (both in animation), a toy land scene, an animated horse and slay, an animated kids and Frosty the Snowman; an ice skating pond scene made of lights; little boys and girls skating and a skating couple; carolers that will be by the carousel; and Santa on top of the shoe box.

Caldwell said, "There will be 40 different poles with new decorations on each pole. We will have an animated horse and sleigh by the cleaners on Main Street. On the other side of the Presbyterian Church we'll have the carousel. The rest of the year will be busy for our Street Department."

Childres said there will be a train by the Hoo Hoo Monument, next to the depot. An ice skating pond will be in front of the Gurdon Times building.

"We will need a lot of volunteers," she said. "The Home Extension ladies will do the ice skating session. Our electrical people may have to add poles and boxes. We've also got snowflakes, tin soldiers, toy filled stockings and angels. The angels and snowflakes will be there across the tracks, when you first start coming into town. We will probably come up with signs to tour the route."

Childres said working on the lights as part of the volunteer crew will also be an option.

"Let us know if Saturday is bad for you but you can still volunteer," she said. "We would love to hear from church groups or their leaders. We need groups to set displays up in different areas. Then the Street Department can come and fix up the electrical system. If anyone has heavy extension cords or multi-plugs, we spent all of our grant money and could use some cords and plugs."

The money for these lights and new display came from an $18,000 Horace C. Cabe Foundation grant and a $2,100 grant from the C. Lewis and Mary C. Cabe Foundation. Childres said she would like to thank the Cabes, as the this would not be possible without them.

Caldwell, who has worked for Gurdon 18 years, said of the old lights, "We had a lot of good comments over the years on the lighting we had, but we were starting to have some trouble out if it. We had them at least 20 years and some of them were worn down."

Childres said the Gurdon Chamber of Commerce owns the old light fixtures and it plans to donate them to smaller communities in the county, such as Okolona and Bierne. The Chamber co-sponsored the efforts with the City to get the new lights.