Robot to Start Holiday Season in Lufkin? [VIDEO]

Every year the traditional lighting of Rudolph the Red Nose Pumping Unit at Lufkin Mall with Lufkin Industries is a marker for the beginning of the holiday season in East Texas.  I have been there every year as kids line up for cookies and milk with Santa....well not every year.  That is only because I was not even born when it started, 46 years ago.  Well just to emphasize how far we have come in the past 46 years, this year the giant converted red and white Mark 640 Pumping unit will be started by a robot.

Come see the Pantherbots, Lufkin High School's first robotics team use there robot to light up Rudolph.  It all gets started at 5pm Saturday November 17th, in the Lufkin Mall Parking Lot.  We don't know much about the robot and I am sure I will be just as surprised as the rest of the people there to see what it looks like and how it lights the unit.

The pumping unit is decked out with more than 1,000 Christmas Lights, including those that make up Rudolph's red nose.  Takes an electrician ever year four days to wire it up, because when we are done with him, he gets to go pump some black gold.  It will shine brightly from 10am till 10 pm daily through the holiday season.