December 6
Power Restored After Brief Outage
Electrical power was restored to residents of Willow Mills early Saturday morning after a transformer failed Friday evening plunging the entire town into darkness.
The failure came after a power surge brightened then dimmed holiday decorations throughout the town at about 8:30 Friday night. Rural Electric spokesman Howard Biggs was unable to pinpoint the cause of the power outage, but postulated that the energy draw of holiday lights is much higher in the village this year than in previous years.
“With Millennium decorations as popular as other holiday lights, we are seeing a 30% overall increase in power consumption over previous years,” said Biggs. “It is an extraordinarily bright town this year.”
A lack of power did not dim the holiday spirit, however, as bands of carolers emerged on the streets with flashlights and lanterns offering to escort shoppers to their cars, and stopping at nearly every home to offer candles to shut-ins.
Fire trucks were pulled out of the fire house and stood idling in the street for the duration of the outage, but only one emergency call was received when Lola Neidig went into labor and had to call her husband at the firehouse to take her to the hospital. The Neidigs are proud of their 7-pound 8-ounce son, Jonah, who was born at one minute past midnight on Saturday morning.
“Somehow it seems appropriate that he was born during a blackout,” says proud father John Neidig. “But that’s another story.”
Power was restored at 12:27 Saturday morning.
Electrifying Results
BACK AS FAR as 1870, soon after the War Between the States, Willow Mills was a growing metropolis with gas lights on Main Street and all along the train station.
The gas line through town was fed from a tanker on a siding outh of the tracks that was regularly replaced by the 5:15 train Wednesday mornings. The tank car was parked on a siding next to the city tank. It took only twenty minutes for the skilled railroad men to unhitch the car, pull it onto the siding, and rehitch the remaining cars before pulling out at 5:35 in the morning.
The tank car was replaced the next week, having been emptied of its cargo by Hugo Alquist, the village lamplighter.
Every evening just at sundown, Hugo would cart his ladder and strike plate down the street to light the lamps of the city. He did this without a notable break for thirty years. It was a noble profession for a single man in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Hugo had moved to Willow Mills with the gas line. A crew came into town to trench Main Street and the train station, and install the tank. Hugo was an enterprising man who had been traveling with the installers for ten years and yearned to settle down and maybe raise a family. He went to the City Manager and pled his case. Someone needed to light the lamps in town or they would be worthless. It would be best to have a lamplighter who knew and understood gas and could handle the job without blowing up the town.
Hugo got the job and the rest of the crew left town without him.
That first night was glorious. There were three lamps along the platform of the train station. He started nearest the tank and opened the valve, striking his flint to spark the gas. Then he moved to the next lamp. As Hugo made the turn onto Main Street with his ladder and strike plate, people lined the street to watch the lights march into town and out the north side. There were a grand total of ten lamps lighting Willow Mills.
Hugo did find a willing woman and married within a year of moving to town. He was known as a sober Lutheran who never missed lighting the lamps.
In 1880, Willow Mills had a larger population than the 320 in Wabash, fifteen miles south. The city rival, however, was more advantageously positioned on the banks of the Wabash River and was the county seat with a brand new courthouse.
What's more, on March 31, 1880, Wabash threw the electric switch at the courthouse and lights flooded it. Wabash officially became the first electrically lighted city in the world.
Willow Mills scarcely noticed. The city had gas lights and a perfectly good lamplighter.
But time marches onward. Before the turn of the century, electricity reached Willow Mills. Hugo could see the writing on the wall as it was, and drafted a plan to electrify the gas lights of the town.
And that started the blackout.
People had become used to having light along Main Street and the train station. But in order to convert the gas lights to electric, the gas system had to be drained, cables run through the pipes and into the lights, and sockets installed in the streetlamps.
Things always take longer than they do, it seems. What was to be a two-week blackout extended to two months as Hugo, who knew the gas line and exact location of every valve, directed the work. Main Street was paved that fall and the lights elevated up to the sidewalk. It just took a while.
Nonetheless, the people of Willow Mills have always had a penchant for celebrating any occasion with an uncommon glee. This time, they set New Year's Eve 1899 as the time they would light Main Street again.
As people counted down the time to the new century, they waited along a dark Main Street and around the fountain square. At precisely 12:00 a.m. on January 1, 1900, electric lights illuminated all of Main Street. Everyone cheered the coming of the new century.
Hugo continued in his role as the lamplighter for another fifteen years, even though electricity was common in most homes by then and the street lights were put on an automatic timer.
The streetlights along main street are still the original fixtures installed in 1870 and electrified in 1900. The connections have been updated, but the lights still shine in our little town.
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