For nearly half a century, Yellow Springs has rung in most every new year with the same characteristic quirk.
A raggedy disco ball wrapped in Christmas lights slung over a wire dangles over the intersection of Xenia Avenue and Short Street. As the clock nears midnight, a chilly red-nosed crowd of hundreds amasses in the village’s ad hoc Times Square. People have brought their babies and bottles, silly string and extra scarves, and everyone’s smiling year to year.
“Three … two … one …” The bedazzled ball falls. Downtown erupts in cheers and confetti. Kids go wild and couples kiss under champagne spray.
That’s how it’s been since 1980, when Yellow Springs’ first New Year’s Eve ball dropped. And for more than half that time — 28 years to be precise — villager Lance Rudegeair has manned the ropes.
(News archive photo by Reilly Dixon)
It’s been a good run, Rudegeair told the News earlier this week, but it’s in with the new and out with the old. This was Rudegeair’s last year dropping the ball; picking it up — only to drop it again on Dec. 31 — is Dan Badger, longtime villager and former owner of Yellow Springs Hardware.
“With great power comes great responsibility,” Rudegeair told Badger with a laugh.
Some of that responsibility entails expecting the unexpected. This last ball drop, for example, didn’t go quite as planned.
Fifteen minutes until showtime, Rudegeair’s rope attached to the disco ball snapped. (Badger admitted that rope had come from the old hardware store.) The clock was ticking and hundreds of folks surrounded Rudegeair on his ladder as he held the ball, desperately thinking of a solution.
“Luckily Dan was there,” Rudegeair said. “Without him, I would have just held the thing over my head at midnight.”
The pair jerry-rigged a last-minute contraption that raised the ball a few feet. And with the extra lift provided by Elliot Cromer’s crutch, the ball managed to get 10 feet aloft.
“But then we weren’t able to get it down,” Rudegeair said. “I don’t know. I’ve never had that happen before.”
Rudegeair said it wasn’t this year’s mishap that spurred him to pass the baton, but rather a desire to spend future New Year’s Eves with his family without all the pressure and coordination of putting on Yellow Springs’ last/first show of the year.
At the 2017/2018 celebration in downtown Yellow Springs, then 21-month-old Jack Rudegeair, grandson of ball-drop master Lance Rudegair, got the opportunity to touch the enchanting New Year’s sphere. (Photo by Matt Minde)
The ball, Rudegeair expects, will be in good hands with Badger.
“So, I sat down and thought about what improvements to make,” Badger said. “The only one I’ve come up with so far is getting a better rope. Otherwise, I think we’re good.”
He added: “But really, what Lance has done perfectly over the years has been keeping the event small, keeping it simple and keeping it independent of other things going on.”
As Badger sees it, Yellow Springs needs more chances to gather and make merry without having to spend a buck — the kinds of events where “the only cost of admission is just showing up,” as he put it.
Longtime Yellow Springs ball-drop impresario Lance Rudegeair is shown as he prepared to raise the official new year’s ball for its traditional midnight journey. (YS News archive photo by Gary McBride)
“It’s always something to look forward to,” Badger said. “You’re going to see everyone you know, and everyone you know is going to be in a good mood, and everyone you know is going to be happy to see you — at least for 20 minutes or so.”
Just so auld acquaintances not be forgot: a little local history. The Yellow Springs annual ball drop began in 1980 with the late Prentice Tomas as the master of ceremonies.
As previously reported in the News, Tomas pulled together friends and fellow villagers to form the “Times Square Yellow Springs” committee. Past reporting indicated the first ball to be “dropped” at midnight was a beach ball, which Tomas is said to have thrown or kicked off the roof of the bank or Little Art Theatre’s marquee. About 25 people were there to witness the spectacle.
By year two, hundreds made their way downtown for the New Year’s spectacle, and Yellow Springs got itself a new tradition.
New Year’s Eves that followed included appearances of Father Time, played at least one year by the late Ron Siemer, and Baby New Year, played by Larry “Electric” Gerthoffer, clad in a diaper and mustache.
It’s unclear when the current ball came into play, but Rudegeair hinted that one of his predecessors might have nicked it from a student gathering space at Antioch decades ago. He admitted it could use a little work should Badger not retire its services — a sizable panel came off during Rudegeair’s last drop.
For now, though, the New Year’s sphere is safely boxed up in an undisclosed location, Badger said. He may make some aesthetic improvements to the ball, he may not.
Only time will tell.
By Chris Wyatt
Nov. 15, 2025
First night at the Hall for a while. I had a lovely fire and read folk horror until I fell asleep. Bliss.
Nov. 28, 2025
We once again navigated Thanksgiving successfully.
Bob is in Iowa visiting his friend Delia, and so it was just Karen, Morris and I. I bought a duck and Morris made confit duck legs and wings; the breasts were marinated in a dry rub from The Winds, then seared and served pink. We had roast potatoes, broccoli, peas, bread sauce and gravy. It was delicious.
I then drove out to the Hall to click on radiators as it fell to 25oF last night. On my way back I picked up Kit Kat ice cream from Dollar General — not fancy, but tasty. I was being very generous as Karen didn’t eat her broccoli, and so should probably have been denied any dessert.
This morning it is still 25 degrees F, and so I’ll light the fire. We had a generous cord of split, seasoned hardwood delivered a few days ago. Karen and I stacked the lot in two hours, I now need to get plastic on the top of it before it rains/snows. It is a mix of ash, oak and cherry with some Osage and should burn beautifully. Many of the chunks are quite large, and so I’ll split those as needed.
‘Tis the season.
While the wood was being delivered, our power pole very slowly, and gracefully began to collapse. It fell to a 45-degree angle before being stopped by its wire guy lines. I called AES Ohio and a crew was out within an hour. The pole was replaced in less than three hours. Amazing really.
The folk who work on the electrical lines in America are heroes.
We are in no danger of losing power now, and my main goal is to keep the pipes from freezing. I think we are only a week or so away from having to blow the water out of the pipes. I simply can’t keep the fire in while I am working, and while Karen could, I think she’d rather be at home with Archie and the motherlode of crafting materials.
Nov. 29, 2025
I spent a night at the Hall and kept a fire going. It was very peaceful. I read and ate crab rangoons, which were very tasty.
The new wood burns well and is straight grained, which means it is easy to split wood down to kindling for starting and restarting the fire. I’m glad I had broken a chunk down, as I awoke at 1 a.m. to find sparse embers. The fire easily restarted and I stoked it up, added more wood at 4 a.m., and then awoke at 7 a.m. I chopped up another piece of cherry as the sun rose, and was treated to skies that went from blood red to magenta, then pure gold. It is now cloudy, so I’m glad I caught that.
I headed home to take medication that I had forgotten to bring with me, did the washing up, and started to make the filling for a shepherd’s pie. I’ll finish it with mashed potatoes later, but there is no point making that yet.
It will snow later today, so I will squirrel away more wood into the garage.
Dec. 3, 2025
We got snow and Bob survived an epic snowy drive back from Iowa. Well, I say survived, he seems pretty scarred by it.
With temperatures below freezing for the whole week I had no option but to borrow a compressor and blow the water out of the house. Really, the only downside here is that we can’t flush the toilet, which means we can’t really stay out there for more than one night. The water isn’t drinkable so we are accustomed to taking our own water, that is not an issue. We can also eat from paper plates, so that is also not a problem. It’s just the toilet that is the problem, and I should look into getting a composting toilet as backup.
Dec. 15, 2025
We have had temperatures way below freezing for nearly two weeks now, so I blew the water out of the pipes at just the right time.
I bravely checked the temperature in the kitchen and it was 29 degrees F, which isn’t bad given that it was zero outside. Brr. One of the DeLonghi radiators is on a low setting and is situated where the water comes into the house, so hopefully it is just above freezing down there. I boosted the setting just in case.
I have meetings and inspections all week, and then I’ll be done for a few days. I’m feeling pretty happy. Morris aced his first semester in business school with a 4.0 gpa, so we celebrated by removing all of his wisdom teeth. Poor lad. Bob is still waiting on all his grades, but aced all his philosophy classes, which will make him happy. I’m not sure any surgical celebrations are required for Bob.
The holidays approach and as we never really do anything special, we are fully prepared.
Presents have been sent back to the UK, and funds allocated to children for slippers, gloves and luxury food items. I’m not sure what I’ll get Karen, it will likely be Turkish yarn that she selects herself, or a subscription to “Selvedge” again.
*Originally from Manchester, England, Chris Wyatt is an associate professor of neuroscience, cell biology and physiology at Wright State University. He has lived in Yellow Springs for 17 years, is married and has two children and an insane Patterdale terrier. “The Patterdale Hall Diaries,” by Chris Wyatt, is now available in book format via Amazon for $11.99.
By Don Cipollini
Evergreen trees have long been associated with winter celebrations because they are beacons of growth, resilience and everlasting life during the bleakest times of the year.
Likely originating in pagan tradition, evergreen conifers were adopted as a symbol of Christmas in north-central Europe. Originally, live trees were decorated in place outside during holiday seasons, but it was Germans and their neighbors living in the late 1400s and early 1500s who decided that decorated Christmas trees would also look good inside houses and other buildings.
Accordingly, the tradition of decorating a Christmas tree in the United States was popularized in the late 1700s and early 1800s by German immigrants. Those first Christmas trees were mostly harvested from wild populations of pines, spruces and firs and brought inside to be decorated. Growing interest in this tradition as the nation expanded led to a need for more trees than were widely available.
Growing Christmas trees as a cash crop in the United States began in the early 1900s in western Pennsylvania. Some of the first Christmas tree plantations were started in Indiana County — the county where I grew up — in 1918. It was there that the cultivation of Christmas trees as we know it was first tried and perfected and innovations such as shearing trees to develop better form and baling trees for ease of shipment were introduced.
By 1956, 700,000 trees were cut in Indiana County, earning it the moniker “Christmas Tree Capital of the World.” I remember a billboard proudly proclaiming this honor along a highway leading to one of the larger producers in the county. It was one of our main claims to fame, along with being the birthplace of actor Jimmy Stewart and writer Edward Abbey. Christmas tree sales would surpass one million by 1960, and many plantations, both large and small, popped up on converted farmland throughout the county and the state as landowners sought to cash in on the gold rush.
Even Taylor Swift spent some of her childhood on a Christmas tree farm in eastern Pennsylvania, immortalizing her experiences in the 2019 song “Christmas Tree Farm.” Many of my friends had summer jobs at Christmas tree nurseries, shearing trees using large machete-like pruning knives that they swung all day in the baking sun. It was a good-paying summer job but backbreaking, and many workers did not stick with it for long. Our beloved local School Forest in Glen Helen was established in 1948, and many an alumnus could attest to the work required to grow and maintain Christmas trees even on a small scale.
Christmas tree production continued to grow in Pennsylvania for a time but eventually leveled off and then declined as technological expertise spread around the country. By the early 1990s, many of those fly-by-night operations established in the 1950s and 1960s were long abandoned. Once six-foot-tall Christmas trees were left to grow into large trees resembling those in the Pine Forest in Glen Helen, which was planted in 1926.
As of 2022, Pennsylvania still ranked fourth in production, with a little more than one million trees cut each year — roughly the total from Indiana County alone in 1960. The leaders were Oregon and North Carolina, cutting more than four million trees each. Michigan ranked third with about 1.5 million trees cut, and Ohio ranked 10th with about 160,000. Some states have risen to prominence while others have fallen, as consumer preferences have shifted and climate change has led to the loss of some previously suitable habitats for optimal Christmas tree growth.
The conifer species grown and sold as Christmas trees have varied over the years, from Scots, Virginia and white pines to white and blue spruces, but the current leading sellers are firs. This is no surprise, as these trees have deep bluish-green soft needles, retain their needles well after being cut and have a wonderful aroma. Firs grow best in the cool climates of northern states such as Oregon and Michigan or at higher elevations in southern states such as North Carolina, helping to explain the leadership of these states in Christmas tree sales.
The current pick of the litter is Fraser fir, and some sellers of live trees, such as big-box stores, offer only this species. Ironically, while grown and sold widely as a Christmas tree, Fraser fir is endangered in its native high-elevation habitats in the southern Appalachian Mountains, existing in only 38 small populations across a few states. It shares this feature with the ginkgo tree, which is endangered — if not extinct — in its native habitats in China but planted widely as a hardy ornamental tree.
The cultivation of Christmas trees is an important component of the green industry, with many environmental benefits over traditional row-crop agriculture. Its semi-naturalistic plantings harbor higher biodiversity than other kinds of cropland, and trees stabilize soil and sequester carbon better and longer than other crops.
But it comes with many of the same concerns as any cultivated crop. Like most crops, large-scale production depends on inputs — many petroleum-based — such as herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers and water, some of which may remain as residues on the tree.
Christmas trees are unlike most other tree crops in that they are brought indoors and handled extensively, where the risk of encountering those residues is higher. That risk can be reduced by thoroughly rinsing the needles and bark of the tree and letting it dry outside before bringing it indoors and decorating it.
There is also a carbon cost associated with growing and transporting trees. One way to make the living Christmas tree tradition greener is to buy organically grown trees. Organic production is possible, but as of now there are only about 50 organic Christmas tree farms in the United States.
Other options include buying local to reduce transportation costs and recycling trees as food and habitat for wildlife. Trees can also be mulched and used as compost, returning nutrients to the earth.
Even better is to buy a living Christmas tree that you plant outdoors each year after the holidays. Before you know it, you may have a Christmas tree crop of your own!
*Yellow Springs resident Don Cipollini, Ph.D., is a professor of biological sciences at Wright State University.
Though the village’s corner pharmacy was closed unexpectedly for two days earlier this week, and amid some rumors circulating online of a permanent closure, the technicians behind the counter at Yellow Springs Pharmacy had simple message for the community:
“We’re here for the long-haul,” pharmacist Rick Berning told the News on Friday, Jan. 9. “Yes, we had to close for a few days, but in the long-term, we’re not going anywhere.
Barring any additional unexpected closures, Yellow Springs Pharmacy’s hours will continue to be Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Berning explained that this week’s two-day closure occurred because of the unexpected loss of the previous pharmacist, Brian Ludney, who just recently moved onto a different job in healthcare.
Because the pharmacy’s parent company, Florida-based Benzer Pharmacy, didn’t find a replacement pharmacist quickly enough, the village’s only drug counter was forced to close. Then, on Jan. 8, Berning came to temporarily fill in. He’s been a pharmacist for 50 years, and for several years in the early aughts, worked for Town Drug.
The site of a pharmacy for more than 90 years, the shop — located at the corner of Xenia Avenue and Glen Street — has been owned by Benzer since 2018. Benzer bills itself as an independent alternative to the large chains while operating more around 85 owned stores and 38 franchised stores across 17 states.
According to Berning, the location’s new pharmacist is expected to begin “as soon as he signs on the dotted line,” and in the meantime, Yellow Springs Pharmacy will continue to be staffed by just him and technician Miranda Pennington — the sole employees.
“We appreciate everyone’s patience with us,” Pennington said, alluding to occasionally longer-than-normal wait times for prescription fills, compared, at least, to when the pharmacy had more than two staffers behind the counter.
Berning added that ongoing pharmaceutical drug shortages across the country have also affected local operations.
“For instance, we’re having a hard time getting a hold of a certain drug called Eloquis,” Berning said. Eloquis is the brand name for Apixaban, an anticoagulant medication used to treat and prevent blood clots and prevent stroke.
“And in some cases, people will want their prescription to be sent to Kroger,” he continued. “But I’ll have just called them, and they’ll be out of it, too.”
That example aside, Berning said that Yellow Springs Pharmacy presently has more difficulty in stocking generic medications over name-brands.
The News will continue reporting on forthcoming updates and changes at Yellow Springs Pharmacy.
The area National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, hosts a local Connection Recovery Support Group, for those living with a mental health condition, the second Monday of each month, 6:30–8 p.m. The next meeting is Jan. 12.
A Yellow Spring-based Family Support Group, for those who love someone with a mental health condition meets the second Thursday of the month, 6–7:30 p.m. The next meeting is in February.
Both groups meet in Rooms A&B at the John Bryan Community Center. Email info@namicgm.org, or call 937-322-5600, for more information.
Support groups also meet during the day Wednesdays at the Vernon Center in Springfield. This drop-in center at 222 East St. offers a variety of services and activities Monday–Friday, 8:30 a.m.–3 p.m.
Transportation to the Vernon Center is available Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to Yellow Springs residents who live with a mental illness. Call 937-505-9435 between 8:30–9:30 a.m. to be picked up.
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