Oh, for want of a bucket truck. Or maybe a mechanic. For a decade, the towns of Fincastle, Buchanan and Troutville have relied on a Botetourt County bucket truck to put up—and take down—Christmas lights. You may have noticed that the lights are still up in both Troutville and Buchanan. That’s because the bucket truck is at the school bus garage in Fincastle waiting on repairs.
Troutville, on Saturday, used a pickup truck and a ladder to unplug the lights so that town’s electric bill would not continue to increase. Scott Paderick, a town employee, said a crew has been waiting for weeks to take down the lights. Because the poles are along busy US 11 and the large wreaths are very heavy, it would be dangerous to attempt to remove the decorations without the bucket truck. “It’s out of our hands,” Paderick said.
“We’ve been trying.” In Buchanan, the Christmas wreaths on the light poles are still burning. Mayor Tom Middlecamp said they will continue to do so until the bucket truck is fixed. Normally, the town would have removed the heavy ornaments during the second week of January, he said. “They can be right mean to work with. You have to have a bucket truck in order to do it and do it safely. We’ll get her and get them down.
[The county has] been awful good about letting us use (the bucket truck).” The Society to Keep Fincastle Lit, which takes care of that town’s lights, managed to get the colored strings of bulbs down from the poles on January 12. But it was an exercise in frustration, according to Mary Bess Smith. Smith also serves on Town Council. Calls requesting the bucket truck, which included an offer to fix it themselves, went nowhere.