City can still find residents willing

I have watched city trucks with cherry pickers and city employees install the downtown Christmas decorations for several years. I also watched Phil Witry propose to the City Council that city employees install downtown decorations provided private citizens would purchase the decorations.

I agree that our present decorations are not very outstanding. My memory has taken me back to the late 1940s to the early 1950s, when I was employed at Seiger’s Electrical Service. As I recall, there were 12 employees. We would work our eight-hour day, get a bite to eat and begin to install the lights.

Our lights were bought by the Retail Merchant Association and stored at our business location. They were not fancy: two strands of wire with pigtail sockets attached and a cable to support the assembly. We used extension ladders and attached the cables to hooks in the walls of buildings and strung the colored lights across the street at various intervals.

I suspect that you might still be able to see some of the hooks in the walls. Most of the lights were powered by cords passing through windows, being plugged into building outlets. We also decorated, I believe, a live tree on Fishburne Military Academy property. There was a problem with bulbs disappearing as the students liked to decorate, too.

I tell you this because we were not paid to do this work. It was all volunteer. This was in a time when the merchants association worked together, deciding opening hours, closing Wednesday afternoons in the summer, etc. I believe we can still find volunteer people to do things to make downtown better.

Claude Leake
Waynesboro