The Other End of the Line

Somewhere near two o’clock in the morning, about fifteen years ago, my clamoring phone brought me awake from a deep sleep.  My house seemed abnormally dark as I reached out and found the phone on my night table. “Huh-lo,” I croaked once I pulled the handset to my face.

“Mitch, this is Bob,” a voice on the other end of the line said.   “Where in the hell is your house?  Power is out in your neck of the woods.  I’m not finding anything out here.  I want to come pick you up.  Maybe you can help me locate everything.”

The voice on the phone belonged to someone I had known since high school.  Bob now worked as a linemen for the power company.  I bumped into Bob regularly in my work as an electrician.  After talking a bit more with Bob, and explaining where he could find me, I pulled on some clothes and then went to stand at my bay window to watch the road where it stretched across the landscape to touch my house.  A few minutes later, a pair of headlights trawled through the darkness to reach me.

I ran out and climbed into Bob’s line truck once he arrived and we bounced along some of the nearby roads so I could show him where the power lines were routed.  Bob soon found the problem—a thrown cutout—and restored power as I watched.

That’s what linemen do.  Day and night.  Sometimes, linemen wade right into the guts of a storm and fight to keep the lines strung and the poles upright.  They work late.  They work hard.  That night, I asked Bob if he minded the late nights and chasing power lines into the storms.  “I love it, Mitch,” he said without hesitation.

 

Back at the dawn of the electrical era, in the late 1800’s, one out of two linemen were killed on the job.  Many died from electrocution.  Others perished in falls or other non-electrical accidents.  Though conditions and methods have improved greatly, working as a lineman is still one of the ten  most dangerous jobs in the world—they experience on-the-job fatality rates that are something near twice that of police officers and firemen.

 

Two nights ago, while working with a crew to repair a line damaged by a severe thunderstorm that stuck the Helena area, my friend Bob was killed in freak accident while setting a pole damaged by the storm.

This is a message for my friend Bob Mitschke: “Thanks for all.  I’ll see you at the other end of the line when I get there, brother…” 

--Mitchell Hegman