Md. Town's Holiday Glow Is Zapped

But the work order sent to Allegheny Power started a new set of wheels turning.

"If they had just gone up and hooked up the lights like in the past, they'd be up there right now," said Allegheny Power spokesman Allen Staggers. "Because they asked for more power connections, that triggered an inspection process that is not done year in and year out."

Or as Fazenbaker, at the luncheonette, put it: "If they had just put them up, nobody would have said anything. But they wanted to do things according to Hoyle."

The bad news started to hit in November.

First there was a letter from Verizon to the mayor about the dangers of illegal attachments to utility poles. It warned "that posting of any signs, banners, Christmas Decorations or balloons onto poles without permission is illegal and can be prosecuted as trespassing."

Town Council member Sandra K. Wilt said that if she were still a footloose 20-year-old, instead of 53 with a job and a daughter to raise, she probably would have committed the trespassing herself to put up those lights.

"I'd have gone to jail for the lights when I was younger," she said.

But the utility companies were not about to disregard the dangers. The Maryland State Highway Administration got involved. Town officials were informed that most of Lonaconing's poles were only 40 feet tall, instead of the required 45 feet, which would mean the Christmas lights would hang too low over Main Street. An 18-foot clearance would be needed from curb to curb.

"If a wire is hanging at 15 feet, a truck could snag it. It could snap a pole, and someone could get seriously injured," Verizon spokeswoman Sandra Arnette said.

"We never said the town should not hang the lights. But safety is the first thing."

Verizon had worked with the town of Havre de Grace in northern Maryland to resolve similar problems, she said.

In Lonaconing, November turned to December, and town officials continued to talk with Verizon and Allegheny Power.

Allegheny Power agreed to send a lineman to town the second week of December to work on some of the acceptable poles. But the town would need to remove all existing lighting attachments and install new attachments on each pole to meet specific safety standards -- and hire specialized workers to do it, something the town's tiny budget could ill afford.

"They gave us a list of all of the poles and what they needed," Coburn said. "But some of the needs are out of the town's budget."

Overwhelmed, the Town Council voted unanimously to abandon the lights this Christmas.

In an effort to salvage some holiday spirit, the Christmas Light Decoration Committee bought some electric deer figures and trees to stake into the ground around town. But by that time, the ground had frozen solid.

"It's hard to get anything in the ground here now," Staup said on a 20-degree morning last week. "We can't even get Christmas wreaths in the graveyard."

In one last attempt to make a holiday statement, town workers have inflated a large green Grinch, the famous Christmas-hating character created by Dr. Seuss.

The Grinch now smiles his fiendish smile in Fountain Park on Main Street, where the coal truck spilled, right next to the Verizon office. He guards a carefully lettered sign that reads, "Who really did steal Christmas from Lonaconing?"