Light displays brighten up holiday season.

Byline: Bob Welch The Register-Guard

Yet in thy dark streets shineth

The everlasting light

- Phillips Brooks, "O Little Town of Bethlehem"

There was a Christmas tree in the office and one in the shop - lights and all - but not one for the boys who worked the pits.

It wasn't as if they were grumbling but, you know, it gets pretty bleak down there, hauling gravel around, especially in late December when the days grow short.

Alan Babb, co-owner of Delta Sand & Gravel & Construction, heard the concern on a December day in the early '80s. He could have ignored it. Or barked an order for someone else to take care of it.

Instead, he did what anybody who's worked for Babb would expect him to do: he bought a little Doug fir at a Christmas tree lot, got some lights, drove his pickup into the pit and wired the tree to a pump stand.

And that, folks, is what led to those seasonal light displays you see at night as you drive down Belt Line Road, where Delta sits just west of the Willamette River. They're the doin's of a CEO or, as Babb calls himself, "the handyman."

The Christmas tree with the star on top. The Valentine's heart. The St. Patrick's Day shamrock. The Easter cross and eggs. The Memorial Day cross. The Mother's Day "Hi Mom" and Father's Day "Hi Dad." The Fourth of July fireworks. The Labor Day arm and hammer of labor (that one always throws me). The Halloween pumpkin. And, of course, the Thanksgiving cornucopia.

"Look at this," says Babb, now 75, as he lifts his pant leg to show bruises on his shin. We're atop the platform on which these seasonal symbols are placed. `That little baby is left from putting up `Thanksgiving' last month. The cornucopia got me.'

But how can you stop the tradition? Goodness, the "Delta Lights" have become as much a part of Eugene as buttes, Ducks and graying hippies. Kids love them. People drop by cakes to say thanks. Or call the office: "Hey, where's the shamrock?"

Hundreds of letters have come in over the years, including one from a Santa Clara woman whose husband was dying of cancer. Each night, she'd come home from the hospital and see that tree with the star on top. "It somehow just made me feel a little better," she wrote.

Floods in December 1995 wiped out power at Delta. Babb didn't panic. He rigged up a portable generator so the Christmas lights would shine on. And the next year he put the lights on a different stand, closer to the highway.

Babb and his brother Lee run a business that will gross $30 million this year. But his hole-in-the-wall office has all the pizazz of a day-old Pepsi - and is cluttered with Christmas lights.

In boxes. In grocery sacks. On a coat rack, hanging like a tangle of fishing tackle.

"Those aren't Christmas lights," corrects Babb, who reminds you of a younger Kirk Douglas. "That's the cornucopia."

"He's a frugal man," says George Staples, Delta's risk manager. When paint peeled off old bulbs, he wouldn't throw the string away. "Instead, he'd soak the bulbs, strip the rest of the paint off and use them when he needed a clear bulb. Saved 30 cents a bulb."

Babb and I climb a steel ladder to the 15-foot platform. A steel grid for the Christmas tree is already in place. The patterns for the 10 other displays are welded to another frame, twists and turns of quarter- and half-inch steel looking like suburban streets from the air.

Each season, Babb climbs to the platform and replaces last seasons's bulb strings with those for this season.

Why? "I suppose there's a little whimsy involved," he says. "Here's the mean, nasty sand-and-gravel company offering simple signs of the season."

And? "Oh, you get letters like that one from the woman whose husband was dying."

"He has a set of ethics from a different generation," Staples says, "and part of that is a desire to give back to the community."

Well, it's a wonderful gift. Because that woman was right: It just somehow makes us feel a little better.