For many years I looked forward to the Denton Ridge Christmas Lights event in Linden, NC, an 80,000-light creation engineered by my uncle, Lyn Denton, and orchestrated by his can-do spouse, Debbie Walters Denton. I enjoyed watching the amazement of visitors. It reminded me how much my childhood was shaped by having an uncle more magical than Santa.
When my brother and I were growing up, our teen-aged Uncle Lyn created amusement parks for us using raw materials from my grandparent's farm and his fantastic imagination. Still dreaming and building in middle age, he created an old time-village on his property and then lit it up at Christmas, rekindling a sense of wonder in all who entered.
My Childhood with Uncle Lyn
As a child I played with balls and bikes and an array of multi-aged children along the back lots of our urban Durham neighborhood. The most treasured times in my early years, however, were visits to my grandparents’ farm in the NC Sandhill's region between Lillington and Fayetteville. There was a long dirt road through pines and tobacco fields to the unpainted farm house framed with a rainbow of zinnias and gladiolas.
As our Buick plowed through the deep white sand, I moved to the edge of my seat watching for a toe-headed, teen-aged Uncle Lyn, perched on his over-sized bike, somewhere along the path. Pre-mobile phones, he waited for hours to greet us and then pedaled behind our car to the farm. Uncle Lyn was the star of these visits and the zodiac to a world of wonder.
Between each of our visits he created something new to dazzle my younger brother and me. He made zip-lines crossing vast lengths of forest that were conceived from nothing he had ever seen, only dreamed with his uncanny imagination. We chased after his trained pig, Hotshot, who followed Lyn or did tricks for stale marshmallows dangling from the back of Lyn's bike, or we mounted Hotshot’s back and pretended the hog-lot was a rodeo.
We also rode wooden saw horses down by the barn or the Ferris wheel Lyn made from an old wagon wheel. He lured us to the riverbank to crawl through dark, scary tunnels carved in the clay soil or up wooden ladders nailed to tall trees to see his newest, grandest treehouse. When my mother warned us not to leave her sight, he showed us how to bend reeds, cover them with mud and create a maze of tunnels. He helped us rake pine straw to form boundaries for our playhouses and forts. Even when my mom could see us through my grandmother’s kitchen window, we were in a land faraway.
My brother and I grew up, but thankfully, my Uncle Lyn, like Peter Pan, dwelt in Neverland with his playful imagination when he wasn't engaged in the practical chores of making a living. Until recently, Lyn lived on a 65-acre plot of land on a branch of the Cape Fear River that served as a palette for his indelible imagination for 40 years.
At middle-age, he started building fantasy tree houses and cabins for his adult children, and swimming holes with rope swings along the river for family gatherings. Then he decided to recreate an early 1900s village. “I had this idea that when my generation dies out the younger generation won’t know where we came from so I just started building different things from the past.”
One building led to the next and when completed, “The Village” contained a country store, Model-T workshop, one-room school, a working blacksmith shop, a wash house, a farm house, and a smoke house for drying meats. Each building was decorated with museum-quality period relics that he and his wife Debbie found here and there; or received as donations from people who heard about the place and wanted to contribute something from their attic or barn.
In the back of his mind, Lyn built the village to lure his daughter, Courtney and son-in-law, Ben Dixon, who hold degrees in Parks and Recreation, to transform The Village into an events center. For a couple of years, his kids ran a triathlon mud race through the village and in and out the myriad of ponds scattered through the woods. While they lost interest in the idea, Lyn and Debbie kept building and collecting to expand the village museum.
The Story Behind Denton Ridge Christmas Lights
In 2010 and 2011 the Sandhill's Antique Farm Equipment Club asked the Denton’s if they could string up some Christmas lights at the village and sell tickets as a fundraiser. It was somewhat of a hit or miss success, but more importantly, it planted the seed in Debbie’s mind that helped her turn Lyn’s dream of a village events center into reality.
Lyn added a building with miniature cars and farm equipment at 1/16th model scale to his village. Next came a Santa's workshop filled with antique toys, Mrs. Santa's bake shop, and anything a Christmas elf might need.
Over the next five years, Lyn and Debbie unleashed their imagination to create their own Christmas Lights Show. Initially, they carried visitors from the car park to the village on a converted tractor trailer and later by old tram cars they bought from the NC Zoological Park. They purchased thousands of lights to line the trails, constructed twinkling arbors through the forest, and also attached lights to frame every building in the village. The Denton Ridge Christmas Lights festival opened in 2012.
Each year they added more fanciful elements, enough for a family to spend an entire evening in old fashioned holiday cheer. Bluegrass bands performed in the old barn along-side the petting zoo. Kermit the goat stood in his glory on the back of a draft horse, a self-taught trick he was happy to show off for a hand-full of grain the kids sourced from the turn of an old bubble gum machine.
Visitors meandered from building to building and were amazed by the period collections. They ate coal-baked sweet potatoes with a cinnamon sugar topping; listened to acapella carolers; tried to figure out what was alive and not at the manager scene; and drank hot cider and roasted marshmallows over bonfires. Children climbed up on Santa's lap and whispered in his ear, sometimes pointing to the antique toys in his workshop.
Luckily, I was able to return for the Denton Ridge Christmas Lights finale in 2017 and see its transformation since my first visit in 2012. It was unforgettable. Like the children, I was sad to leave when my eyes grew sleepy and the chill set in.
But alas, in the tram ride back to the car park I discovered several more delights. My eyes wide open again, I didn't want to miss the Lynosaurus rising from the pond or an antique airplane zooming down upon a Christmas lights runway. I watched for penguins on ice blocks by the row boat, and finally hooted one last laugh at a tumbled-down ghost lot of antique cars with a sign, “Buy and Cry". No piece of collected junk went wasted in Lyn's fantasy world.
While Lyn created the backdrop, Debbie, his wife, was the decorator and events master-mind. The Christmas Lights show ran from Thanksgiving to New Years over five years and required a staff of 52 people. As Deb used to say, “All the good people I know work at the lights.”
Some of the key people included Sheila Lewis, off-duty deputy, Shannon Odenwelder, who oversaw security. Ronnie Thomas played Santa; Tom Steves and Joe Polinski minded the campfires. Judy Hawkins oversaw the country store and Shelia Lewis headed the sweet shop. Toni McLamb served up his homemade ice cream and Chris Bolan sold his wooden stick horses and other toys of the era.
There were parking lot attendants, bluegrass musicians, live nativity scenes and carolers and even a plein aire painter, Brandi Neighbors, from Studio Eleven One in Lillington, NC.
As I melted into the joy of being there I also stood in awe at what was required to run this event. Debbie created a master spreadsheet of who was working, at what hour, and what station; and how all the consumables were ordered, stored and refilled nightly.
Along with her sidekick, Sheila Lewis, she created the displays; and every afternoon they checked section after section of lights before the opening. When her team of workers arrived, they were expected to inhale Debbie's enthusiasm and mantra: “Keep a smile on your face and welcome each and everyone who comes. They are going to have a good time!”
For Debbie, the endless hours of work to ready the stage was driven by her passion. In fact, she started thinking about the next season as soon as the current one drew to a close. Deb shared a memory: “My very best and favorite night was the first night we opened. Prior to that, we tested the lights here and there for two weeks and although all the lights had been tested, all 80,000 were never on together until opening night."
"When I looked up from the bottom of the hill toward the buildings I could tell you if one string of lights was out, or even three lights, for that matter. When all the lights come on together for the first time, I got such a thrill. When we rounded the nativity scene on the tram and saw all those lights it was awesome. I knew we were on for the season and ready to go! When our lights came on, it was like the heavens and stars came down to earth.”
The Denton Ridge Christmas Lights was a labor-intensive effort that required two months of preparation before the event and weeks boxing up the fragile antiques after the show. One would wonder why Lyn and Deb invested so much effort into this event. I think that my Uncle Lyn was reminding me and thousands of visitors to never stop dreaming. For Debbie, it was a showcase of her talents, as well. Together they revealed supreme teamwork.
Uncle Lyn's Backstory
Writing this story gave me the opportunity to talk with Lyn about my memories of him and to ask him the source of his uncanny imagination. Here are some things he shared with me:
“When I grew up, I didn’t know I was poor until I was invited home to spend the night with a friend from school. He had a bathroom and they ate in the sunroom on a tablecloth. I invited him to come to my house but was embarrassed that we didn’t have an indoor bathroom.
I decided way back then to take ordinary life and make something out of it. I was behind the times. I was raised by myself. I didn’t get plastic toys so I used blocks of wood and nailed on bottle caps for wheels and piece of tin to shape a tractor. When I got something mastered, I got tired of it and made something else."
“My very first memory was when I was 4. My big sister, Ruth, bought me a tricycle with the first money she earned from working in a five and dime store. I rode my tricycle until there was no rubber on the wheels. Then I re-engineered it.
I cut off the goose neck on the back wheels with a hacksaw. I still have a scar from that. Then I took 2 red rider wagon wheels and nailed a 2x4 over the axle. That was the rear that held up the seat. Then I separated the tires and put on a platform to sit on and I steered it with my feet and a rope. My neighbor had an old motor from a gasoline washing machine. I put a belt around the motor, a pulley on the side of the wheel, and then a lever with a pulley on it to tighten the belt. When you pushed the lever forward it would go. It won’t no speed demon but we were riding. This is the first go cart I ever heard of. I was nine. “
“We were born poor, but my daddy gave me a gift. He didn’t worry about tomorrow. He said take one day at the time, “God looks after the birds in the woods, so if I just do the best I can then God will look after me.” I was staring at him real seriously and then he said, “There’s just one thing you can’t get used to. 'What’s that', I asked my daddy. His blue eyes twinkled down at me and he said, “A rock in your shoe.”
So I think all together what he said is good guidance for living, sometimes you go with things the way they are, but sometimes you gotta take the rock out of your shoe.”
" I had been raised by myself and when I went to school I was a shy kid. I hated for the teacher to call on me to read and had nobody to help me at home because my parents were illiterate. The teachers found out I could draw and let me draw my reports, so that’s how I survived. I also loved poetry and found I could memorize it. I won prizes for that.
Today I came across my high school agriculture teacher who taught me his first year out of college. He said, ‘I was paid as your teacher but you were my teacher. You could build anything.’ “So I guess looking back I can see the things I had within me, maybe not school wise, but something I could use in life."
One of the last things my uncle told me as he wandered down memory lane was this: “When I was growing up, Mr. Lucas over at the general store sold things to us on credit so we didn’t starve to death in the winter. He was a good man so when I started building "The Village", I used some of the bricks from his old store as the foundation for some of my buildings.”
I was glad he told me this. I had seen those old bricks at the base of the outbuildings. It reminded me that the foundations of our lives are built from our talents, relics of Important memories, and good people along life’s road who believe that no matter how tough life can be there's still magic to be found.
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