Front Porch: I-90 Christmas lights take community effort

The late evening drive back to Spokane from Seattle this time of year seems so much longer than usual. It’s darker earlier, the weather is dicier and it’s just less pleasant … until that stretch of Interstate 90 between the Columbia River and close to Moses Lake when the darkness is illuminated in places by Christmas lights displays.

How wonderful to see these colored lights dancing by the side of the road in the dark of night seemingly in the middle of nowhere. How cheerful. How unexpected. But how did they get there?

This question is one of several I’ve been considering this year as I made a conscious effort to actually be attuned to what I see along I-90 as I make the trek back and forth, as I so often do. In pursuit of that I’ve learned about Sprague Lake, Mount Stewart, fence line crop signs and more. The Christmas lights are the latest in what I’ve discovered.

And in telling about them here, I’ve struck a bargain with their creator. I first heard from him when I wrote last June about the signs in the fences along the freeway identifying the crops growing in the fields beyond. In telling that story, of how the Quincy Rotary and others work to install, maintain and rotate those signs, it was pointed out to me that I didn’t go back far enough and left out the name of the originator of that project, the late Vern Crawford.

I said I would make amends when I wrote about the Christmas lights in November. The creator of the light displays agreed to tell me his story as long as I didn’t mention his name. Though he’s been named in past news coverage, he prefers to stay as anonymous as possible. “For me,” he said, “the joy is in being anonymous.”

In the mid-1980s the man was working for a farm south of Quincy, principally taking care of the irrigation circle system. With permission of the owners, he used the welding equipment in the farm’s shop to build a display frame depicting Santa’s sleigh and reindeer out of scrap digger chain (used in harvesting potatoes). Covered with strings of mini light bulbs, the display was put atop a Quonset hut used for potato storage along Highway 283 between George and Ephrata. It was such a hit in the community that more displays were requested.

Glad to oblige, the man – while still working full time – devoted more of his free time to building displays. Since there was electrical power already available at the circle sprinklers, he also strung up lights in the form of stars in the rabbit ears, that section of the sprinkler that holds up the end spray gun, starting with one in a field on a back road near Quincy.

Working with the relays on the irrigation circles was intriguing for him and it only took some minor rewiring to get electricity flowing all the time. Building one or two new digger chain displays each year – a Christmas stocking, a bell, candle, an angel and more – he was able to put them up at the irrigation circles, beginning with two along I-90 owned by the farm he worked for. He reached out to other farmers, who were glad to have the displays, and before long there were 20 displays – all different and all but one created by the originator of the project. Interesting to note, the one he didn’t make, a Mr. Potatohead display, was created by his son as a senior class project in high school.

It was by no means a one-man effort. His family helped, as did community members. When it got difficult to maintain the mini lights he switched to larger screw-in bulbs, and AgFARMation, the nonprofit agricultural information organization with the huge electronic roadside sign near George, helped fund that change. He also mounted the displays on home-built trailers (which he constructed from mobile home axles and pipes) to move them on site behind his pickup.

While at the rest stop near George in the early 1990s he began chatting with Vern Crawford, who was manning a coffee stand there for his Adrian Grange. Vern, a retired farmer, figured out he was talking with the Christmas lights guy and shared with him that more than anything else people would ask him to identify crops that were growing in nearby fields. So with proceeds from coffee and snacks donations, plus some of Vern’s own funds, the man helped Vern put together a flier that was handed out at the rest stop identifying crops in fields in the region. That took a lot of coordination with area farmers.

That project then moved on to posting wooden signs by many fields providing the same information in the mid-1990s. Soon after, Vern and the man were invited to speak to the Quincy Rotary, which was interested in having crop signs along Highway 28 between Quincy and Wenatchee, after which the Rotary got involved helping with the project, eventually taking it over completely.

Crop signs, Christmas lights and full-time farm work got pretty overwhelming and impossibly time consuming. The man’s wife referred to herself as the Christmas widow. One year, due to illness, he didn’t get any of the displays put in place and got a heated call from a Seattle tour operator. “She really chewed me up. She had brought a tour group over to Moses Lake and when they drove back after dinner and there were no lights for them to see, she was really upset.”

He felt he had failed his community. “I realized it had to be more than just a family doing this for it to have any sustainability. I had had so much help from so many people along the way, so it really was about so much more than me.”

And so Quincy Farm Chemicals, a division of the McGregor Co., now maintains, stores and installs the lights, most of which line I-90, with a few along Highway 281 between Quincy and George. AgFARMation continues to pay for new bulbs and participating farmers pick up the cost of electricity to light the displays. It truly is a community effort, including participation by FFA high school students.

The man who started it all is very happy with how it’s all worked out. His wife, I am told, is also happy to have her husband around for the holidays once again.

As for the rest of us, from the week before Thanksgiving to the end of the year, we continue to benefit from the twinkling lights that brighten up that long straight drive through the darkness on our way home.