Heading home from a houseboat trip on Lake Powell found my dad and me wondering about the poles by the railroad tracks. A few weeks earlier we had found some crossarms lying on the ground by the railroad tracks. That’s when we noticed that there were no wires on the pole. My mom works by the tracks so we asked her to keep her eyes open. When we got home from our trip she called her work to ask her boss if anything had happened with the poles. He said, “No , but a few minutes ago an orange railroad truck pulled up next to the tracks and some workers were looking at the poles.” Well, when my dad and I heard that we rushed right over in my mom’s small station wagon.

When we got there we didn’t see the workers, but we did see a pile of poles complete with crossarms and insulators. We began unscrewing them from the pins. We also got some of the pins. Once we had gotten all of the ones that we could get we got in the car and went looking for the workers.

We found them farther down the tracks cutting down more poles. I must add at this point that these workers must not have done this too often because several poles nearly landed on them and crashed through several fences.

Later in the day when we had gotten all the insulators we went home. Once we were at home we washed them and counted them. Over 100!

Later that summer I set up a little stand next to the road and set out several signs. I was trying to sell them as paperweights. They didn’t sell too well and I will admit I sold several over the price they were worth. (At the time I had no way of knowing what they were worth.) Later in the week I finally gave up. Those same insulators still are sitting down in my basement. I have only one question. Does anyone want some Hemingray 42s?!?

THE END!