View from the snowflake truck, originally uploaded by cynthiacloskey.
This Sunday morning, at the alarmingly early hour of 6:30am, I and a group of other volunteers for Butler Downtown helped to set up the electric snowflake decorations on Main Street, Butler, PA.
We volunteers unloaded the decorations from the special rigs they’re stored and transported on. In the photo above, we’re riding along on the truck with some extra decorations, back to Butler County Ford where they’re stored.
Linemen from Armstrong did the rather trickier work of lifting the decorations into their brackets and wiring them to the electricity. (Actually, I believe they just plugged them in with standard-issue electrical plugs. But there were other wires to work around and certainly more details than I know about.)
Good heavens, they were quick. We needed several trips to get the decorations into place, as they were stored on four different rigs and we had just one truck and trailer to transport them. By the time we got the larger snowflakes out on the street, the Armstrong guys had nearly caught up. When we came back with our second batch of the smaller, star decoration for the gas lamps, they were standing waiting, tapping their feet in the cold.
The whole thing took under two hours. Afterward, we went for breakfast at Linda’s South Side Restaurant, a classic diner. I had a massive and delicious potato pancake with sausage and some good coffee. I’d love to show you a photo of it, but there was not a chance to take one as I pretty much inhaled the food the moment it hit the table. Decorating Main Street is hungry-making work.
Tonight I went back to see the results of our endeavors. The street looks lovely, festive and bright. My iPhone can’t capture the scene — too hard to balance the strengths of the various light sources. I’ll try again with a better camera. But the shot above gives at least a small taste.
One of my favorite holiday sights is the view of Butler’s lights as you drive down North Main Street hill. I may have to make an evening trip to Butler in the next months just to see them again.