| Steve Blow: Can't hold a candle to these bulbs 01/17/2001 By / The Dallas Morning News I got a welcome call from Garland Button the other day. He was letting me know that his light bulb is still burning.
And if you don't remember previous columns, that must seem like a mighty strange call.
But I was tickled to receive it. And it put me in mind of another famous light bulb.
First, let's back up and explain about Mr. Button: Shortly before his birth, his mother made a shopping trip to downtown Dallas and bought a light bulb for the nursery she was preparing.
Mr. Button was born in December 1918. And that nursery "lamp globe" was burning long after he had grown from baby to boy to man.
It was eventually put away as a keepsake, and a tradition began: At Mr. Button's birthday get-together each year, the bulb is carefully brought out, screwed into a lamp socket and – while the family holds its breath – switched on.
Burning bright
And year after year – for more than 80 years – the bulb has cast its soft glow.
Well, Mr. Button's bulb report this year jogged a memory from my earliest days as a reporter.
My first job in journalism was with the dear, departed Fort Worth Press. This was in 1974, and a big story at the time was the closing of downtown Fort Worth's Palace Theater.
But the biggest story was concern over the fate of the Palace's famous long-burning light bulb.
The Palace was built as the Byers Opera House in 1906. And on Sept. 21, 1908, a theater electrician installed a dim light bulb in the cavernous darkness high above the rear stage door.
The bulb burned day and night – and somehow just kept on burning.
After 30 years, it was considered amazing enough to be included in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
After 60 years, Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Elston Brooks wrote a tribute to the famous bulb: "Kingdoms fall, governments change hands, Liz Taylor takes husbands. But the pathetic little light globe remains unchanged."
And I wondered: What ever became of the Palace bulb?
Our news archives contained only one story about the bulb – a report from 1977 that an Irving man, George Dato, had purchased the theater property and had taken the bulb home.
I was pleasantly surprised to find Mr. Dato still listed in the Irving phone book.
"We kept it burning right here in the den of our home," he said. "It got to be quite a good conversation piece."
Still shining
I was almost afraid to ask: Is it still burning?
"As far as I know," he said. "Six or seven years ago I loaned it to the Stockyards Museum in Fort Worth."
The next day, I made a little pilgrimage to the museum. And I was genuinely moved to behold the old bulb glowing faintly in a crowded display case.
Its long, loopy filament still burns night and day on a special reduced-power circuit.
"Nobody wants it to go out on their shift," museum administrator Sarah Biles said with a laugh, though she clearly was not joking. "It's the last thing we check when we leave at night, and it's the first thing we look at ... in the mornings."
The old bulb didn't have the sort of shrine display that I expected. In fact, it struck me as a little melancholy, glowing there in the corner like any ordinary piece of Fort Worth bric-a-brac.
Few come in search of the bulb these days. Clearly, it's almost forgotten.
As Mr. Brooks pointed out in his column, the bulb came to life when Teddy Roosevelt was president and the Wright Brothers were still tinkering.
But I guess it's hard for a light bulb to compete in this age of lasers and laptops.
Steve Blow can be reached at 214-977-8374.
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