Special Christmas tree sits on steps of Greene County Courthouse this year
C.R. Nelson
Bob Crouse of Rogersville stands in front of the Christmas Tree he donated to stand in front of Greene County Courthouse this holiday season.
C.R. Nelson
Linwood Patton helps decorate the Christmas tree in front of Greene County Courthouse.
C.R. Nelson
Greene County Tourism director JoAnne Marshall places decorations on Greene County Courthouse’s Christmas tree.
East Franklin Fire Co. Capt. Rick Patton and his grandson, Linwood, help decorate the tree in front of Greene County Courthouse.
C.R. Nelson
The Christmas tree is placed in front of Greene County Courthouse.
C.R. Nelson
The tree is lowered into place in front of Greene County Courthouse.
C.R. Nelson
Greene County’s Christmas tree is taken off of a truck before being placed in front of the courthouse.
C.R. Nelson
Mark Harmon shapes the tree that will stand this season in front of Greene County Courthouse with a chainsaw.
C.R. Nelson
Greene County’s Christmas tree is brought into Waynesburg on a truck.
C.R. Nelson
Greene County’s Christmas tree makes its way toward Waynseburg.
C.R. Nelson
Bob Crouse of Rogersville watches as the tree he donated to be placed in front of Greene County Courthouse this holiday season is loaded on a truck for its trip to Waynesburg.
C.R. Nelson
Volunteers get ready to cut down this tree in Bob Crouse’s Rogersville yard. The tree was transported to Waynesburg and placed in front of Greene County Courthouse for the holiday season.
Volunteers work to decorate the Christmas tree in front of Greene County Courthouse.
C.R. Nelson
The Christmas tree is put in place in front of Greene County Courthouse.
By C.R. Nelson
There is a special Christmas tree – at least as far as Bob Crouse of Rogersville is concerned – on the veranda in front of Greene County Courthouse’s neoclassic columns this year.
A hole in the big pavers in front of the courthouse remains hidden all year until that special day in late November, right after Thanksgiving, when the Loyal Order of the Moose Lodge 461 in Waynesburg and a crew of Greene County workers commence to harvest a donated fir tree from somewhere in the county, trim its trunk then wedge it into that hole and anchor it down.
Then it’s time for the Franklin Township Volunteer Fire Co. to bring its ladder truck and decorate it from the top down. It’s a tradition that’s been kept alive since 1931, when James K. Thomas donated the lights, West Penn Power paid for the electricity and merchants put up Christmas trees with lights on both sides of High Street.
That was the year Bob Crouse was born at home, in a little bungalow in Rogersville.
Crouse chuckled as he stood in his backyard on Schoolhouse Road, admiring the tree he decided to donate to the Christmas cause this year.
“I transplanted it here in 1985 when I moved back with my mother from the family home next door. It was growing against the wall and I could see it when I looked out the window,” he said.
Crouse mowed around the tree and watched it grow for a few seasons before moving it to the edge of this yard where the bank is steep and sunny.
“It was just a splinter, about six inches high,” he recalled. “I don’t know why but I let it be.”
More than three decades after it was planted, the tree towered overhead as the big county boom truck positioned itself under it and the crew got ready to bring it down, load it and bring it to town.
The tree received its own police escort as it came up the hill from West Waynesburg to the traffic lights of High Street.
Crouse, who worked with wood for W.A. Wilson Staves in East View after he graduated from Center Township High School in 1949, made an educated guess his tree was well over 40 feet high, mature and ready to be a seasonal celebrity before an errant blight struck it in its prime.
His guess seemed to be well under the mark – even with four feet of trunk left in the ground and other foot removed to whittle it into the hole in the paver, it filled the boom truck bed to overflowing, so plump with sunlight that it left branch tips along the road on its ride to town.
This year’s Sunday after Thanksgiving community project was on track to have the job begin at 9 a.m. and be done as fast as the weather and the size of the tree would allow. The thermometer said 40 degrees but the wind let everyone know winter is here.
As volunteers waited inside for the take down crew to arrive, Crouse reflected on Christmas past.
“Not everybody had trees back when I was a kid,” he said. “The churches had them but they were little, not like this.”
But there were always stockings to be hung and there were fir branches on the mantle, he remembered. And toy trains and trucks made of metal, not plastic.
Crouse was all smiles as he dated himself.
“When I was seven years old my grandmother got me my first Roy Rogers guns and holsters,” he recalled.
When the crew and their trucks arrived it took more than an hour to do the precise business of sending lodge administrator Mark Harman into the top branches on a sling to cable the tree to the boom, then shimmy down the trunk. A few expert cuts with the chain saw and the tree took to the air, dangling from the boom before being eased down and straightened, centered and secured.
Now it was on its way to kick off the holiday season in Waynesburg as Christmas trees have for the last 90 years.
From the 1930s through the 1950s local gas companies donated the work and time it took to get the trees and bring them to the courthouse with company equipment.
When Lodge 461 in Waynesburg took on the project in the 1960s, members who were gas company employees or retirees still had access to the equipment and the Franklin Township Volunteer Fire Department had the bucket truck and manpower to do the decorating.
When Waynesburg Prosperous and Beautiful got involved 13 years ago, Holiday Open House was added, with fire barrels on street corners, carolers and musicians, wagon rides and visits with Santa for shoppers to enjoy as they browsed stores and outdoor vendors for presents.
When the boom truck pulled up onto the sidewalk in front of the courthouse at 10:30 a.m. patrol cars and trucks put on their lights. The smell of fresh cut wood was in the air as Harman got out the chainsaw and began shaping the trunk as more volunteers began arriving to help out.
As traffic passed by in a single lane, operation Christmas tree began. It would take more than one lift, dangle and drop to get the trunk secure, then slowly straightened and anchored in place.
“We’ll use the cut branches for the lamp pole baskets,” Greene County Tourism director JoAnne Marshall said as she looked through a pile of discarded greenery.
Amazon boxes full of colorful cardboard ornaments, fresh red ribbon bows and red pink and white poinsettia were stacked and ready to be hung by helpers as soon as the lower strands of lights were in place.
Above, a fireman in the ladder bucket started the delicate dance of swinging back and forth as the many strings of lights, donated by the Moose, got wrapped and draped.
More helpers soon arrived, some for the first time.
Ten-year-old Linwood Patton watched as his Pap, Franklin Township Volunteer Fire Co. Capt. Rick Patton pushed strings of lights onto high branches with his pole hook, then picked up a dangling strand and became his partner.
As the bottom of the tree became bright with ornaments and LED lights, the ornaments rose up with the ladder bucket and began to slowly spiral down.
It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
Crouse drove to town and was part of the crowd as the tree was anchored in place, but decided to sneak home for a warm lunch just before the decorating began in earnest. By the time he returned at 2 p.m. the nearly 30 volunteer elves had done their magic in record time and were gone, leaving the gift of a fir cone, shed by Crouse’s big beautiful tree, on the step for him to find.
Crouse held it up as he posed for a photo with the tree This was how it all began in Rogersville more than 40 years ago, when the neighborhood squirrel planted a seed beside a wall and forgot about it.
“What you do is put the seeds in the refrigerator with something damp – a paper towel,” he said. “The ones that sprout, plant them.”