Indiana letter carrier lit up the city

You might say there's a little "Tim Allen," television's popular Home Improvement star, in Jerry Mazock because, like Allen, he has a lot of p-o-w-e-r. Mazock has a state-of-the-art, 200-amp outdoor power board with 32 plug-ins and an electric bill at Christmas time $250 higher than average.

Not too bad considering he lit up half of Fort Wayne, IN, with his holiday light display. It does qualify him for the electric company's small-business rate, but Mazock says it's all a small price to pay to put a glow into the lives of thousands of people who drive by his house.

His annual ritual culminates on Thanksgiving at 7 p.m., when he and his brother Fred power up the display. From that minute on, visitors stream by each night, entire families packed door-to-door in cars to see Mazock's latest twinkles in electrical artistry. This year he doubled up the lights on every angle of the large two-story house, lit up 16 spruce trees on the perimeter and added new directions and patterns of chaser lights.

Mazock's annual Christmas countdown actually begins in August when he gears up to hang his lights - this year, well over 24,000. Starting on October 7, it becomes an activity that consumes the normally easy-going, affable Fort Wayne letter carrier - complete with the sacrifices, pain and anxieties of a Broadway show opening.

By the time he starts his six-week schedule leading up to Thanksgiving, Mazock is prepared to battle the elements, but the weather is only half of it. Working with raw, splitting fingers, he'll scoot and slide through several pair of old letter-carrier trousers, winding up with a roughed-up derriere. And he often works in the dark surrounded by stacks of unopened boxes of lights, a 10-foot wooden ladder and a few of the 70 power cords and hundreds of feet of electrical tape that become his creation. But each day a new light-count is posted on the Mazock refrigerator: this year he had 19,350 by the second week in November.

"This is my niche here," he says, an icy wind swirling around his long, bearded face as he admires the finished work. "I usually work two to three hours in the dark every day and use a week of vacation."

Says wife Linn, a mail handler, who helps when it comes to doing the chimney, and happily supports her husband's electric obsession, "When he sets out to do something, it's not going to be some mediocre project."

The organizational challenge of the project would baffle any planning guru, but Mazock thrives on it and his passion to make and share something beautiful. "The warmth of the people is what fires my energy during this most wonderful time of the year," he says with a breezy lightheartedness.

On Christmas eve, Mazock gathers his family at the curb for another tradition. While daughter Gloria, 15, shivered in the cold, son Mickey, 10, played in the snow, and son Ernie, 12, ran a few pass routes, the whole family wished a few hundred people a happy holiday and felt the light of another holiday burn brighter.

"It's really for the joy of the season," he adds. "We get a great sense of fulfillment."