One of the most unique Christmas displays in Brown County is making its debut this year at 4408 River Oaks Drive in Brownwood, where Ryan Rudloff has pieced together a music and lights show.
“This the first time I’ve ever done this,” Rudloff said. “I moved over here from Bangs where we had regular lights on our house. I laugh and joke and say it’s my neighbor’s fault that I got into this. My neighbor said we had to decorate and I said all right. Last year I decorated a little bit and he threw all this stuff out. Then I said ‘OK, it’s on,’ and I went and found a way to expand.”
Rudloff got the idea for his display from a friend in Santa Anna.
“I have a friend in Santa Anna that does this and I told him he had to teach me this stuff,” Rudloff said. “I just wanted to do something a little bit different this year, something for the community to have a little bit of joy with all this craziness going on. We’ve been working on it for about a year.”
The display features 6,854 lights synchronized with 90 minutes of Christmas music.
“It took me approximately two weeks to set up everything,” Rudloff said. “It’s not totally the way I want it set up, but with work I’ve been running. I took time as I could, evenings here and there, to get things done.”
The highlight of the display is what’s called “the matrix.”
“It has 3,200 lights in it by itself,” Rudloff said. “I’m able to put videos on it, pictures on it. They’ve got some that are even more dense where you can see things better, and maybe I’ll do that in another year. I’ve got a military tribute, it has some photographs of local veterans here, some that have already passed on. That’s just something I wanted to do.”
Rudloff has his own FM transmitter, which allows passersby to tune to 88.7 FM to enjoy Christmas music while watching the light. The display runs
“I’ve actually taken some of the songs off to make trim it down to about an hour and a half,” Rudloff. “I just threw some stuff out there, it’s in a loop and it’ll go through the night. I’ve got an FM transmitter than I built, it only covers a small area, but I can hook up it with my computer box that runs all the lights. It syncs everything with the music and the lights.”
The display is lit nightly from 6 to 10 p.m.
As for what Rudloff’s display plans are the future, he said, “I have no idea. Of course, next year I’m going to add more lights to it and some more props. Learning the program was fun and you can do almost anything with it, whatever you put your mind to. There’s a lot of shows out there that people do all over the country and the world. My friend in Santa Anna has over 8,000 lights on his house this year.””
Rudloff’s message to the community regarding the display is simple:
“I’m not trying to put on a big extravagant show, just come by, enjoy the show, and every once in a while I’ll come out and say hi,” Rudloff said. “Stop by, watch, enjoy, bring your kids by, I just want everyone to enjoy it.”
