OK all you Saranac Lakers .... I need the story about this traffic light at the base of the Town Hall clock. I checked out our beloved "Bunksplace" and I'm not sure if I should reprint the answer. I'm open for an explanation and will update the blog with all explanations. Go for it!!
Explanation (thanks LD!) - It was used to alert the police, to let them know that they needed to come back to the station. Now really, how cool is that! I doubt that there is another town with that claim to fame. (Maybe I should have known this as my Dad was a policeman in Saranac lake!!)
Further info from Saranac Lake's own BS! Way back when the cops had call boxes on the telephone poles (remember?). So I think they saw the light and could hit the call box (only cops had the key to them). Don't know if that's exactly right, but think it is. Then again, what the hell do I know.
Funny little tale: I was in the Newberry lot a few years ago and a family from Jersey was ahead of me, walking toward Main Street, when the father stopped and said,"What's that stop light doing on top of the town hall?" Of course I was eavesdropping (like you), so I said,"Well, if you really wanna know, today is your lucky day." (Wish I had BS' ability to tell a story!)
Got to love this little town, its history, its stories and its folklore.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, November 1, 2003
ReplyDeleteThe light in the clock tower
You know what...
By Howard Riley
There is what looks like a traffic light in the clock tower of the town hall that was uncovered during repair work there, and the town and village offices have been deluged with phone calls about what it means.
Back to the future
Now back in 1985 when the movie "Back to the Future" was being made, Saranac Lake was being considered (because the setting was perfect) for the scene with the clock tower on Main Street when a bolt of lightning hitting the clock would send the actor Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly back to the future. When the traffic light turned green, Marty Would hit the gas pedal and off he'd go. Remember, he had been rocketed into 1955 in a DeLorean car fueled with plutohium that Christopher Lloyd, as the eccentric Doc Brown, had purchased in Libya.
Now when Marty met Doc Brown in 1955 there was no plutonium around, but luckily he had a newspaper clipping with him that reported (in the future) lightning hitting the clock tower and Doc Brown said that was the only thing powerful enough to send him back to 1985. Had the scene been shot in Saranac Lake, they were going to use Dr. Manny Bernstein's 1930 Model A Ford Convertible instead of the; DeLorean. Now my friend Manny is a pretty good actor and I think the director would have let him stand in for Doc Brown. Well anyway, that is not why the traffic light is in the tower, I just made it up.
The real story of the light in the tower
Now here is the unvarnished truth about the traffic light in the clock tower. When Francis Gauthier was discharged from the Navy (he was aboard a Destroyer, the USS Richard P. Leary and took part in six invasions and the major sea battle of the Pacific) and joined the Saranac Lake police force, the traffic light was in the clock tower and the police station was in the basement of the town hall. There were no radios in the police cars, so when the men were out on patrol the phone ringing in the police station activated the red light on the tower (apparently the traffic light was used because it had a red light attached and the green and yellow had no significance).
The secret's at the pump house
The phone in the police station also activated red lights on telephone call boxes located on Berkeley Square and at Broadway and Bloomingdale avenues. But obviously there were no answering machines, and of course the phone would not keep ringing until the officers answered it but here is the secret ... Lonnie Darrah worked at the pump house (that brick building that used to be the village office), and he answered the telephone for the police, which was connected to the police station phone. Now the whole purpose of the red lights was to have the police hightail it down to the pump house and find out what the call was about from Mr. Darrah. The police could call in from the call boxes or answer them if they happened to be next to one when it rang, but otherwise the red lights and the pump house phone were the high-tech system of the day. At that time, there was someone at the pump house 24/7. Francis was on the police force from 1946 until 1961.
Other theories
So there goes the theory that the light was placed there for low-flying planes or that it was signal for UFOs to contact local residents... or it was the only traffic light at the intersection of Main and River back then and the police could write a lot of tickets with drivers using the flimsy defense that they didn't see the light .. or that someone hit the traffic light that was then mounted on a post and it flew up and lodged in the tower and nobody ever bothered to take It down ... or that it was hooked to the air raid warden's tower on top the Hotel Saranac during World War II (much like the terrorist color alert that we have to day) which could signal the all-clear but they actually used a siren.
I hope this story stops all the light in the tower calls at the town and village offices.
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And so the history is told and clarified! It's simply fascinating and another layer of rich texture to add to the allure of Saranac Lake!
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