Up a pole or down a hole
Some jobs make me stop and think: There but for the grace of God go I. I mean, there’s the exceptional ones, like an infantry soldier in Afghanistan, or the person hanging from a winch on a SAR helicopter. Not for the faint of heart, those ones. But closer to home, there are the people who assure that our essential services keep on keepin’ on. The people who take care of the exceptional situations. In particular, the personnel who repair “the lines” for Bell and Hydro.
I watched three truckloads of people tonight, going like gophers, up and down out of manholes. Some of their team had the easy jobs; the ones standing like invisible people with flags, trying to keep cars from meeting trucks head on. Then, there were the ones that were going where the climate is constant. Dark, moist, cool. Up and down the ladders, with ventilation hoses sucking exhaust fumes in both directions. Fixing (I assume) a wire that was no longer a current carrier. Can we stop to shudder.
My parents taught me not to play with the electrical wires. You will get hurt, they told me. Now, these brave souls are down there, in artificial light, trying to figure out where the invisible electrons are hiding. Sure, the power is off. For now…
For the last couple of days, there’ve been a pair of Bell guys up splicing wires on the poles in front of our office. Hundreds of wires. Yelling coded phrases back and forth, like “Put the red-orange-black with the red-green-red”. Now, all my years spent sorting crayons still don’t prepare me to perch on a ladder, backwards, for hours and hours trying to put Humpty back together again. The hank of wires was larger than my forearm. And did I mention the bit about those wires being colour-coded? (As a proud Daltonian, not my idea of fun and games.) I suppose that a fine day in September is as good as it gets in their business. Unfortunately, September will beget November will beget February, and the conditions will degrade.
Let’s face it; up a pole or down a hole, it’s not the place for me.
