TRADITION CONTINUES WITH HUTSON'S HOLIDAY WINNER

With smoking computers, stockpiled food and a ticking millennium clock, the Y2K bug has hit Santa's workshop in the window of Hutson's Furniture.

The annual Christmas window display at the downtown store at 43 S. Main opens today, and Chris Hutson expects a large crowd will gather to see what new idea the family-owned business has concocted this year."We've been doing this 37 years and we haven't done the same scene twice," Hutson said.

This year finds Santa in a dilemma. A clock is ticking down to the year 2000 and his Christmas deadline looms. Elves sit at computers that are smoking from the overload. But not to worry. Thinking ahead, Santa has stockpiled toys, food, even hay for the reindeer and those items line the shelves of the workshop."We thought it would be appropriate for this year. With everyone worried about Y2K, we thought Santa would have the same problems," Hutson said. He added the idea come up one day when he, his brother Dave, father, Charlie, and cousin Jason were having breakfast together.

Hutson shared a few of the secrets behind the window. He said fog machines in the computers create the overload effect. Plastic tubing helps create the illusion of bottles being filled with water. A flashing red light creates a feeling of an alarm being sounded.

Chris Hutson and a crew of five have done most of the work on the window display, including building the room it's housed in from scratch using wood from an old barn. He said they'd been working on it for more than a month.

It's a lot of work, but the window has become such a local tradition since it was begun by Glenn Hutson 37 years ago that the Hutson family doesn't feel it can stop now."People who came down here to see the window as children now bring their children or grandchildren down to see it," Hutson said.