Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Getting better at running Portales' electric show

I’m no Reddy Kilowatt, but I do have a healthy respect for electrical current. I don’t like to get shocked, even by static electricity.

I guess it seems fitting for this guy to be the one a community puts in charge of Christmas Light Show set to music and an entire Lighted Christmas Parade. I’m not the brightest Christmas bulb on the tree when it comes to all things electrical and all I can say is the good Lord has looked out for me.

From the first years I decorated our house as a newlywed, my wife proclaimed I had a knack for planning my decorating for the worst possible weather day of the year. Freezing rain or sleet, 60 mph winds, meant nothing to me — that’s when the lights needed to go up and by Baby Jesus, it was going to happen. It didn’t matter how dark or cold it got, in my prime I stayed at it until it got done.

These days I oversee or overdo, as the case may be where my bad back’s concerned, the light show on the side of our four-story courthouse building. Every year for the last eight I’ve tricked, paid or voluntold someone to help haul all the decorations out of the fourth-floor jail (we keep the lights locked in the hoosegow 11 months of the year) onto the roof.

Once on the roof, no matter the weather, we test all the strings and objects in the light show and start replacing bulbs. Most years that takes the better part of a day. Years after something the likes of winter storm Goliath it takes a couple of days.

Once the bulbs are replaced we begin lowering the displays and light strings down from the three different rooflines. As we do we inevitably notice more than one bulb bang against the wall and shatter.

Once it’s all in place we start hooking up cords to the three controllers with 16 channels per controller; it’s a little like sorting through a plate of spaghetti to locate a stray dog hair sometimes.

People honk from the street when they see you up there and occasionally you can startle someone you know coming down the courthouse steps by speaking their name from on high.

As soon as you get the cords all attached the fun begins as you start to test everything out on the computer inside the jail. I’ve never thrown that laptop over the edge of the roof but it’s been very close.

It seems most years I end up sending something in for repair to a bonafide electrical engineer or waiting on parts to arrive. As I write this tonight I await a replacement controller to get things up to 100 percent on the show.

I keep getting smarter about taking down and storing and putting up this light show and each year I think I might have it all installed and running smoothly in a single day. Most years it hasn’t happened in a single week.

Clark Griswold and I don’t want much for Christmas, we’d just like to see all the lights come on the first time we throw the switch. In the meantime if you see me just pat me on the head and tell me “you’re a good man Charlie Brown.”

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]