BROOKFIELD — The lights come on in Brookfield Thanksgiving night — 250,000 of them.
As he has each year since 1977, Tift County resident Harce McGhee has spent two and a half months covering almost every acre of his Brookfield property with more than a quarter of a million Christmas lights, and the big night is right around the corner.
McGhee’s light show, on each night for four to five hours, will run until two days after Christmas, and he says that he expects the usual turnout — an astonishing 1,200 people a night, most of them out-of-staters who drive to South Georgia just to see the lights.
He started the tradition in 1977 with somewhere between 500 and 600 lights, and he immediately wanted to go bigger.
“I wanted to go with 25,000 to start with,” he said. “And then Joe Courson came out and did an interview and in conversation I told him that I would take any old lights that people wanted to give me. They brought ‘em.”
He says that about 90 percent of his lights are donated.
“And I appreciate every one,” McGhee says.
He has covered four solid acres near his homestead with lights, and has lights and between 50 and 60 Christmas trees scattered across another 10 acres — two months of work that he and his assistant, Christi McGhee, diligently perform each year. They also take down most of the lights each year.
“Whatever the goats can get to, we take down,” he says.
Everyone is welcome to ride by McGhee’s, just south of Brookfield on the Brookfield-Lenox Road. To get there from Tifton, head east on Highway 82, turn right onto Chula-Brookfield Road, left at the dead end and then immediately right again onto Brookfield-Lenox Road, and the lights will be waiting.
“This is just something that we like to do for the public,” McGhee says. “It’s our Christmas present to all of them.”
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