The Good Old Days
This image took me back to my lineman days years ago. Cable television was just being offered and they couldn’t string it fast enough, my buddy talked me into going to work for an installer.
Most lines were in the right of way in the back of homes so you had go into the backyards even when the owners weren’t home. Try running from a german shepard with your belt and hooks on, I once cleared a 6′ tall fence all geared up with a Cujo on my ass, funny they wouldn’t go after you until you were halfway to the pole…..good times. image found here
This image shows the lineman with a lasher that had just spun wire around the strand line and phone cable. The lasher was pulled with a rope by a groundsman from pole to pole, trees were a pain in the ass….along with dogs of course.
I ended up doing high tension power lines and was injured while installing a goats peak on the end of a long line of a helicopter in the Uncompahgre National Forest in southern Colorado thus ending my lineman days. Looking back I must have been nuts to do this work. No lower than dirt, no higher than corn for me now.
The image below is not me but that’s what I did, the sky crane is dropping a main body into banana shutes, (orange thingys on the ends of the four corners of the tower), the guys on the other tower are torquing the bolts, you had to leave them loose so the separate main bodies would be able to flex and fit. I had pics of the day I was hit but have lost them over the years. It was the most interesting work I have ever done…..crazy but interesting.
9 thoughts on “The Good Old Days”
I had the pleasure of dragging out strand when I was in my youth for a summer.
I went back to tree-trimming and line clearance.
I worked as a technician for the Bell system in the 1970’s. “Hooking” poles 8 to 10 times a day. No bucket trucks then. Running cable and drop-wire to houses in North NJ. I got “treed” or in realty poled by stray dogs once in a while. Thank goodness for line hammers.
Sir: What’s a goats peak? In a previous life we hired choppers and cranes for machinery lifts. Always fun……
The two static peaks on top of a metal lacing tower that looks like goat horns.
Soapweed I didn’t either until I googled it
https://www.bpa.gov/news/newsroom/Pages/BPA-line-crew-puts-innovative-work-plan-into-aerial-action.aspx
Been there done that, barehand certified for 500kv
Rich – Wow impressive. None of the work we did was energized but the static electricity from parallel lines or thunderstorms would light you up.
No thank you very much. Never did that myself, doesn’t sound fun.
Picture of the line man really touches me. Looks like my Dad. A man doing a man’s work!