School Bus Driver Has Holiday Hobby

A rather unique Christmas light show is hiding out in the outskirts of Jackson County. The man in charge, well you could say he’s really lighting up with Christmas spirit.
It’s not your typical winter wonderland, but there may be a lot of wandering going on in the St. Martin neighborhood as Mac Broussard’s house on Travis Avenue lights up each night. “I have cars going up and down every night looking at this.”
A bus driver at North Bay Elementary School, Broussard has a holiday side job, building five to 12 foot tall structures of iron, wires, and lights which results in a homemade Christmas light show for families on the Coast. “They’ll pull in and they’ll stop and the kids will get out. I tell them to watch the electricity, back up a little bit,” said Broussard.
An electricity bill well into the hundreds is the price Broussard is willing to pay to light up his holiday creations that he started making 30 years ago. Now the displays take up his entire yard and beyond. “I got to thinking ‘I can weld, I can bend this stuff.’ So, I went to fabricating and putting it together.”
Broussard said his hardest creation was a Sponge Bob. He said it took him two days to make. “You got to put your lights really close together and that takes time putting them really close together, but I have five string of lights. I got 500 lights on that one Sponge Bob.”
Each Christmas light display takes Broussard three to 20 hours to build, time spent worth it, lighting up the hearts of children and their families during the holidays. “You’ll flip about how many children come here during the Christmas holidays. Children, just children, car loads! It’s all about them. It’s about the kids,” said Broussard.