It was the best of times and it was the worst of times..yes, I was a teenager! An impressionable seasoned “veteran” collector of insulators for six whole years, who actually knew seven people also inflicted with my “disease.” The year was 1968.

On one particular summer Sunday, I had the great fortune to have enlisted the use of a vehicle owned by a fellow purveyor of a daily social tabloid (paper boy) who also happened to be entertained at that time with the hobby of searching for glass. We were up at 4:00 a.m. on that Sunday delivering our papers and then we drove in his 1952 pickup to the Central City area.

Little did I know that what was to unfold throughout the day would be a religious experience that would stay with me forever. After we had our breakfast at the wonderful Rockybuilt grease parlor, we flew (in many respects) to our appointment 40 miles to the west, a section of the Colorado mountains rich in history and gold strikes that demanded a ton of dial tone to be brought to the area.

We arrived just before sunup at a pole on a small offshoot of the main Denver-Grand Junction line. It had a odd unfamiliar color of Denver on it that I had spotted a month previous to this trip, but I couldn't climb because of the amount of activity at a cabin nearby. I quietly climbed out of the car trying not to awaken the dog that is always assigned duty to any spot on earth wherever a good insulator is on a pole, and began picking off one of my favorite Denvers to this day--a very rare W.F.G. Co. in vibrant deep yellow green. I had no sooner replaced it with a clear No. 10 than a set of headlights were announcing their arrival through the trees a quarter mile away. After some nervous conversation from my friend, I gaffed down in three steps instead of the required number for safe nocturnal pole climbing, got in the truck and began our escape.

Now to this day, I have never found the person in charge of placing the dogs at those strategic locations obviously well scouted for the good glass that makes a “James Bond” out of the pickers in the boggy, but I do need to thank him for this particular choice in a job. The dog decided to chase that early morning car coming towards us. We heard the gravel grinding and the car spinning as he came swerving to a halt at the insistence of that attack muff. In the years to come I found it necessary to bring that dog a table scrap or a bone whenever I went fishing up that road, because the car he delayed was the county sheriff responding to a call...we just knew the call had to be about us!

We drove by him and gave the traditional “wide berth” to the sheriff as we drove down hill, at which time he looked us over pretty good.

Thinking that it was obviously a good time to go back to the mail line where six cross arms per pole abound. The nearer to Central City, we beat a path to the back road and took the old stage route. This road brought us to poles with 1871s, more Denvers, and some tramps that we thought should be liberated.

As anybody who has been deep in the mountains knows, the sun comes up late and beds down early. We finished up our morning climb and were driving into Central City for an early break and then it happened...we came around a corner, and at a place where no one could climb, over a sharp drop off, next to a mine that ran 24 hours, there stood the pole of poles. This was perfectly choreographed for us. The sun was only half way up on the crest of the hill behind it and the class #1 pole stood perfectly backlit. On the pole were an array of color I’d never seen. Six full cross arms with 58 purple W.G.M. tolls and two light green R. Good Jr. Tolls, not even one aqua in sight!!!

We jerked the truck to a halt, got out and just stood there in total awe and disbelief for a full 15 minutes, and I cursed myself continually for the years to come for not having a camera.

I never forgot that feeling of wonderment and exhilaration as to what it must have been like to see an entire line built with nothing but 1898 goodies on it... no aqua Am. Tels, no Hemi 42s, nothing clear!

This thought fostered a life long goal..to see what it would really look like to rebuild a complete circa 1900 line, all coated with oldies. So in 1980, I began to slowly pick up unusual line pins, and W.G.M.Co. tolls. Twelve years later I had reached my goal of 200 mint dark ones (who wants to be stuck with damaged ones) and began my search for a line to use that had no roads in view, no new poles, and with the aspen, pines and scrub oak turning to fall colors. Of course this had to be back dropped by some 14,000 ft. snow capped peaks, all with phone company permission or I would have to build it from scratch. Piece of cake, right?

After a year of looking, a film job near the “four corners” area took me through Ouray. I discovered an original line still standing in perfect surroundings and was made to order for the job. I then found out that an old co-worker in Mountain Bell was the foreman over the area. He was actually so enthused in the notion, he wanted to help build it. So now the wheels were in motion.

Much to my dismay, six months later my friend was transferred out of state. So in the 1992-1993 winter, I decided to have breakfast with the district level supervisor to re-establish my intentions and “sell” the idea. I have to say he didn’t know first hand how good a super-dark purple looked. At that breakfast, I gave him one to seal our deal. He never let the ear to ear grin go off of his face for a moment, let alone the three minute handshake of thanks! I was in..really in. He was so glad to be a part of preserving on film a recreation of history that he gave me two men and a bucket truck to accomplish the feat, and of course, the use of the Red Mountain Pass phone line for three days.

I emptied my Denver collection of the olive ambers, the greens, the lavenders, the burgundies, and the clears. I took my best 1871s, Westinghouse ponies, unusual tramps, all that I could imagine realistically on a line of this vintage, installed them on a line with old and rickety poles, tied them in to loose wire to recreate an “abandoned” look, tied them to the actual working circuits that fed the mines on Red Mountain Pass, and proceeded to blow thirteen rolls of 36 exposure film from all angles in a bucket truck for ten hours.

After all that anticipation, all the careful planning, all the memories, and the euphoria or accomplishment and watching it unfold, after the greatest picnic ever under a pole line “abandoned” in 1910, while lying on a blanket looking at 250 sun drenched jewels overhead, I was attacked by a feeling, a real sense that something was very, very wrong, The whole scene was incomplete. What was it? What the heck could possibly be missing? The it dawned on me..in the quiet solitude at 10,000 feet and only the sound of the wind rushing through the “quakies’, and a babbling effervescent creek, I had forgotten to include the ever present, ever barking DOG!

P.S. A choice of four different photographic views of this historical recreation, framed and enlarged to 8 x 12 will go on sale at shows or order direct. Mike Bliss, 2309 Nottingham Court, Fort Collins, CO 80526-5230