“What about the time you and Florence made Ortonville‘s Christmas trees go dark?”
That question was posed after I finished reading a story from my book. In that excerpt I tell of when my Big Stone City friend, Florence Lindquist, and I had delivered milk in the dark early hours before going to school one winter. All had gone well until the combination of a biting dog and a dangerous coating of ice had made it impossible for us to complete our milk route.
“The two of you might’ve been arrested!” the questioner continued, referring to the infamous tree incident.
That’s certainly true. The town officials would have been eager to make us an example to discourage any other like-minded kids.
School was in recess for the holiday break of our senior year and the two of us had time to indulge in our favorite evening pastime. Driving from Big Stone to Ortonville and then back and forth on Ortonville’s Main Street looking for other teenagers who were out doing the same thing.
This was in the late 50s. A perfectly-shaped spruce, well over 20-feet tall, stood resplendent next to the brick courthouse; the same one that still sits there today. The tree with its glowing one-hundred-plus red, yellow, blue, and green Christmas lights was a striking contrast to the utilitarian building made of rows and rows of stern-looking bricks. We may have planned the prank, but more likely it was a spur of the moment impulse.
I parked my father’s 1950 Ford a couple blocks away. Our plan was to take only two bulbs, as keepsakes. We couldn’t have been the first teenagers who’d had this idea. A town marshal had been posted at the front of the building to prevent exactly this.
At the time, the key to the security of Ortonville‘s residents was a red light attached to the top of a post located only three blocks north of us. A citizen who needed police assistance called the telephone operator who then hit a switch that turned on that red light, thus notifying the police.
Florence and I walked up the hill and approached the tree from behind, trying to stay in the shadows cast by the street lights. We timed our movements carefully, and when the guard turned away from us, we crept out. I unscrewed a bulb and, with that, the entire tree went dark! We ran back up the hill–dashed two blocks, turned, and ran to the car. I drove to the corner and turned down the hill to the lower street. Florence twisted around in her seat to look back. Whew! The red light had not been activated.
As scary as it was at the time, it turns out we were in the minor leagues of area-pranksters. My brother Bob tells the story of five or six teenage boys who were far more daring. A Farmers Union Oil Co. implement and machine shop was located on Ortonville’s lower street. Late at night this gang of friends laboriously pushed several heavy machines out of the lot onto the road, situating them so that they completely blocked the street. Of course, they would do this only in the depths of winter when the hills leading up to Main Street were coated with ice, and the unexpected roadblock on the lower street effectively trapped some residents from leaving their homes.
Each time the gang did this, a frustrated citizen called the operator. The operator would dutifully push the button and the police cars, sirens blaring, would arrive. The sirens signaled the group to take their places behind the machines, one brave soul perhaps sitting on top of a snowplow. From those safety zones, they’d begin taunting the responding officers.
Whooping and hollering, they then dashed across the Dike Road to the safety of South Dakota where Ortonville law enforcement had no jurisdiction.
At the reading that evening, I smiled when I heard the question. Only an Ortonville reader would have known to have asked it!
©Barbara Hoffbeck Scoblic 2020