Author - Glover
Submitted By -Hardest Pole That Night
Summer, Florida, Thunderstorms a way of life, outages everyday. The Crew I was assigned to work on, I was a lineman at the time had an older foreman and he didn't climb to often anymore, however on this particular day and night, and next morning, We worked 26 hrs straight, he got his turn. We got to the Job around 3:00am, Wire down back yards, no bucket work here. The rest of the crew had been up and down quite a few poles restoring service, I guess the old man got a feeling of guilt and decided it was his turn to climb and repair the downed wire, The pole was covered with Vines and trees were so thick that you could barley see the pole. Then of course it started to rain again, what a mess. The foreman got his tools on gathered up all his material and gave us our tailboard, I was holding the flashlight at the base of the pole for him and I tried to give him as much light as I could under the adverse conditions. He stepped onto the pole and started to climb, I could not see him very well due to the trees and vines, I could hear him cussing and complaing about how this had to be one of the worst poles he had ever tried to climb, I knew we were all tired and I just took a hunch and looked up at his feet, guess what? He had forgotten to take off his gaff guards, and they were the leather type, after the crew stopped laughing and the foreman was back on the ground we all went and had a cup of Coffee. Of course he said he would not want this spread around, we assured him we
wouldn't tell anyone. Yea Right.... Glover