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