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Nick Bowman Features Editor | 770-718-3426 | life@gainesvilletimes.com
She (Times
gainesvilletimes.com
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Steep discount for Magical Nights of Lights
Lanier Islands
Magical Nights of Lights launched in mid-November, but this week you can catch a deal to enter Lake Lanier’s traditional light show.
Bring canned
goods or toy
for $34 off
your ticket
BY NICK BOWMAN
nbowman@gainesvilletimes.com
Want to know one weird trick
to getting into Magical Nights of
Lights for cheap? Show up this
week with five canned goods or
an unwrapped toy between 5 and
6 p.m.
Margaritaville at Lanier
Islands, which has taken over
management of the annual
Christmas attraction in addition
to the resort itself, is offering a
deal this week to benefit Toys
for Tots. If you come bearing
gifts — in this case, five items
of canned food or an in-the-box,
unwrapped toy — you get a steep
discount on the regular $49 per-
vehicle rate.
The deal gets you in for $15
and even gets you 90 minutes of
snow tubing on the new Parrot
Mountain hillside, which usually
costs extra.
Resort managers are offering
the cut-rate option until Thurs
day, according to John Lush,
chief operations officer, and
Darby Campbell, owner of Safe
Harbor Development, which
operates the resort under Jimmy
Buffett’s Margaritaville brand.
Along with the deal, there’s
another reason you should think
about heading down to the resort
this month: Magical Nights of
Lights has gone through a top-to-
bottom upgrade.
The 7 miles of lights spaghetti-
stringing their way around
Lanier Islands are now LEDs
— it took more than a month to
replace the bulbs, Lush told The
Times on Monday, Dec. 3 — and
there are a few additions to the
light show based on Buffett’s
beach brand.
“As you come through the
gates, we’ve actually wrapped
the gates with brand-new gar
land. It’s a lot more festive,”
Lush said.
Through the gates are all the
parrots, beaches and other main
stays from Buffett tunes you
expect, along with a few Magi
cal Nights of Lights mainstays
from previous years. Snowflake
arches along the bridge give
way to 7 miles of the 12 Days of
Christmas and other longtime
fixtures.
And at the heart of Lanier
Islands are new carnival rides
(there are now 13 total), an ice
rink and Parrot Mountain, a new
snow-tubing hill at the resort.
If your kids loved the s’mores
stations in previous years, you’ll
still find them at the resort — as
well as a hot chocolate and hot
toddy bar at the beachside Tiki
bar along the Christmas trees
on the beach at Landshark Cove
(formerly Sunset Cove at Lanier
Islands).
“We’re open right now during
the week at 5 o’clock for Magical
Nights of Lights as well as Par
rot Mountain and the carnival
rides. On weekends, we open at
11 a.m.,” Lush said. “When the
kids get out of school, we’ll actu
ally be open each day at 11.”
While Magical Nights of
Lights will phase out after
Christmas, Parrot Mountain,
the carnival and the other win
ter attractions will stay open
until late-February and even
into March. Margaritaville and
Safe Harbor are banking on the
snowy attractions to fill the win
ter off-season until spring activ
ity on the lake begins to pick up
in April.
Magical Nights of Lights
costs $43 per vehicle if tickets
are ordered online, and it’s $49
at the gate. As Christmas gets
closer, that price will increase
$10.
And coming up for next boat
ing season at the resort: A major
expansion of the facility’s RV
lots, boat storage and docking
capacity.
“Today we have Shoal Creek,
which is 60 campsites and
40 RV sites,” Lush said, “and
we’re going to open 120 state-
of-the-art, luxury RV sites, and
we’re going to call that Camp
Margaritaville.”
Meanwhile, Safe Harbor
owner Campbell said on Mon
day that the company is going to
pump $3 million into the islands’
marinas.
“We’re going to add year-
round, covered slips and ulti
mately a dry-stack storage
facility beginning in the spring
of this year,” Campbell said.
In the first phase of the proj
ect, the resort will add 200 to 300
slips to its marina, and the other
spaces will come through dry
storage next year.
“As far as we know, we have
the last 500 permits available on
Lake Lanier,” Campbell said.
An Appalachian surprise,
care of UPS, and a friend
Tink is like a child
with the mail. He can’t
wait to get it. Since
there’s always a chance
that there’s something
in there that is going
to ruin my day, I don’t
mind waiting. At. All.
He especially loves
UPS deliveries. One
day, he came hurrying
into the kitchen where
I was piddling. He was
grinning merrily, toting a small pack
age in his hands. He held it up and
sang joyfully, “Is this what I think it
is?”
I took the package from him and
looked at the return address. Penguin
Putnam, New York. It took a moment
to realize what he meant. I have a
book coming out with Penguin — a
20th anniversary edition of my first
book — so Tink thought it was an
advance copy.
Puzzled, I shook my
head. “No, this isn’t
mine. It’s too early.” I
tore it open and pulled
a paperback out with
the title: “Travels
With Foxfire: Stories,
People, Passions and
Practices from South
ern Appalachia.”
Immediately, I was
interested. My eyes scrolled down
and I saw the author’s name. I nearly
dropped the book.
“Phil Hudgins!” I exclaimed. “Baby,
this was one of my first editors.”
I remember especially the first
newspaper story of mine that Phil
edited. Slated for the Sunday feature
section — front page — it was about a
Carnegie Hero winner from 25 years
earlier. I tracked him down and the
baby he had snatched away from an
oncoming train and reunited them.
That’s another story.
I thought the lead paragraph was
brilliant. Phil did not. He was puzzled
over it (he was right) but I was 19 and
still had much to learn. He was very
kind as he pulled it apart and taught
me as he carefully edited.
I beamed from ear-to-ear as I stud
ied the cover of his book. I shouldn’t
have been surprised because Phil is
one of the best storytellers I’ve ever
known but I didn’t know he’d written a
book. Especially one about the people
— my people — who I adore. (Phil,
precise newspaper man he is, would
want me to point out here that Jes
sica Phillips conducted a tremendous
amount of research and interviews for
this book.)
The first Foxfire
book, which paid hom
age to the ways, both
peculiar and smart,
of the Appalachians,
was published in 1972.
Since then, it has sold
over a million copies
between 12 primary
volumes and 10 com
panion books. I was
a child when the first
appeared but I remember my moun
tain family talking about it over Sun
day dinner. It was incredible to them
that someone saw enough interest in
the way they dried leather britches or
made sorghum syrup to write a book
about their ways.
As soon as I was finished piddling
— something that mainly Southern
ers excel in — I took the new Foxfire
book to the living room and settled
down to read. For the
first time, I learned
that the father of two
friends of mine once
had a moonshine
museum which cen
tered around his own
moonshine still.
I love enterprising
mountain people.
Then I read about
legendary Southern
writer, Joe Dabney. I have long known
that his writing about the Scotch-Irish
and whiskey-making were important
to the history of the culture but I did
not know that he won the prestigious
James Beard award for his cookbook
“Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread and
Scuppernong Wine.” The book is filled
with wonderful stories.
“How did you choose the stories you
told?” I asked Phil.
“That’s a hard question,” he replied
by email. “I knew some of the stories
I wanted to tell (but) other story ideas
came from all over and, slowly, the
book became a reality. It was a fun
project.”
It’s also fun to get a terrific book in
the mail, unexpectedly, when it has a
friend’s name on it. Especially when
it has stories in it on hunting ginseng,
doctoring with herbs and all-night gos
pel singings.
Those are things I treasure.
Ronda Rich is the best-selling author
of several books, including “Mark My
Words: A Memoir of Mama.” Sign up for
her newsletter at www.rondarich.com.
Her column appears Tuesdays and on
www.gainesvilletimes.com.
It’s also fun to get a
terrific book in the
mail, unexpectedly,
when it has a
friend’s name on it.
SCOTT ROGERS I The Times
Linemen dressed as elves perform on the Jackson EMC float Sunday, Dec. 2, during the annual
Christmas on Green Street parade.
Upside-down elves a delight
at Christmas on Green Street
BY NICK BOWMAN
nbowman@gainesvilletimes.com
Hanging upside down, hard-
hats stuck above their pointed,
elvish ears, Jose Rodriguez and
Colby Chapman were a surprise
crowd favorite at the Christmas
on Green Street parade Dec. 2.
The two Jackson Electric
Membership Corp. linemen
didn’t exactly fit the elvish
type, with their heavy-duty
gloves (rated up to 30,000
volts!) and sturdy harnesses
securing them to the power
poles perched atop the back of
the utility truck.
Even so, they caught the
crowd’s attention with a bit of
gymnastics on Sunday: Along
the parade route, Rodriguez
and Chapman would kick their
feet back, arch their backs and,
upside down, wave hello to the
people on Green Street.
“Everyone was just over
whelmed at the crowd. Of
course, with the guys on the
pole, every time they would
flip over backwards the crowd
would just go into a cheer for
them,” said Kevin Cash, a fore
man at Jackson EMC in Oak-
wood who came up with the
idea for the float.
It might sound like hard
work, but that move is how
linemen take a breather when
they’re on a long job. Their har
nesses, called a bucksqueeze,
are for safety — most linemen
also wear spikes to help them
climb power poles, Cash said.
Basically, they’re standing up
straight when they’re up work
ing on a pole. That gets old after
a while, so to take some of the
pressure off of their legs, they
detach and let the bucksqueeze
support them for a bit — throw
ing their legs forward and let
ting the back go parallel with
the ground.
They could even wave hello
to someone while they’re doing
it.
“I wish I had counted how
many times they did it. They
were good sports about it, ” Cash
said.
Along with the acrobatics
from Chapman and Rodriguez,
the Jackson EMC float was
novel for Gainesville.
The truck carried two fully
dressed power poles, com
plete with transformers and
lights, that were fixed to the
truck using some engineering
that ended up looking a lot like
Christmas tree stands — sturdy
stands, as the truck had to be
driven as-is to Gainesville from
Oakwood.
It’s the first float entry from
Gainesville’s Jackson EMC
operation in a few years, and
about 25 people were involved
in the project.
It took about three days to
build the float, and relative to
what the company’s linemen
were doing this time last year it
was a happy task indeed.
“Last year we were still deal
ing with Irma, so this wasn’t
something we could even
attempt,” said Cash, who is a
foreman in Jackson EMC’s
underground division.
The truck used in the float
wasn’t just for fun, either: It
was an authentic remake of the
poles that power Gainesville.
“We wanted to demonstrate
the example — that’s what a
three-phase line looks like,”
Cash said. “We built it and we
replicated just what we would
do any other day. That allowed
us to put our two workers (up
there).”
He noted that the Jackson
EMC employees and families
on the float were just as sur
prised by their reception as the
crowd was by Rodriguez and
Chapman. So much, in fact, that
decommissioning the float is a
bit of a sore subject.
“It’s kind of breaking our
hearts — we’ll have to tear it
down at some point this week to
be able to use that trailer,” Cash
said, “because now it’s look
ing like we could have some
weather this weekend, so we’re
getting ready for that.”
Elves don’t only help Santa
make gifts, don’t you know —
turns out they help him keep
the lights on, too.
