Those Were the Days, My Friend!

I’m really not exactly too sure what year it happened. Probably some time around when Elvis Presley was on the onset in becoming a legend---1954 or thereabouts, I say. Whatever year it was, I was not older than two or three years old and it was the summer when my parents and I and a few other relatives made a trip from Brockton, Massachusetts to Quincy, Illinois to visit my great aunt and uncle. During that long drive along hundreds of miles of back roads, a fascination occurred to me which made a permanent change in my life’s direction. The intriguing sight of seemingly endless miles of open-wire telephone lines along the roads we traveled, neatly graced with multitudes of sparkling insulators, fascinated me more than anything Santa could ever thing of bringing down the chimney! That’s when my love and affliction for insulators all began.

Circa 1954 -- Joe strapped in the rear seat 
of his parent's car ready to observe hundreds 
of miles of telephone open wire lines.

Soon after arriving home after that trip it was clearly apparent that my newly captured interest in open-wire lines and insulators was simply no passing thing, according to my relatives who remember everything all so well.

Play time in my backyard consisted of making my own little pole lines. These were personally erected from discarded wooden shade rollers or sticks as poles, and popsicle sticks or clothes pins simulating crossarms. My late mother’s sewing box was commonly devoid of colored thread since that readily available material nicely and conveniently resembled open-wire strung between my “poles”. This backyard avocation lasted for many years. The older I got, the more complex my displays became. Needless to say, neighborhood kids were rather mystified and most curious about my handiwork, which I shared with very few others. At about age 11 or 12, I enjoyed the thrill of nailing scaled down “crossarms” to trees around the extreme fringes of our yard, keeping them not so obvious to onlookers. Bureau knobs, broken off bottle necks, and glass coffee pot tops made great looking insulators when secured to their simulation 1” x 3” crossarms. Battery operated street lights using aluminum pie plates as radial-wave reflectors and hoola-hoops cut in half as upsweep mounting brackets made my flashlight bulb-illuminated lights look real, coming to life!

Photo taken May, 1958 of Joe's backyard pole line construction.
Note "pole" recently built standing by his left hand and insert photo.
Sticks and clothes pins surely did the job!
Fence posts laying on ground in rear of photo bordered his exhibit area.

Up until my early teens, open wire telephone and telegraph lines were a commonplace part of the landscape in the area where I lived. So, during my younger years there was plenty of good looking pole line architecture to continuously admire. As I got older, I became more fascinated about this type of scenery. In order to personally express this admiration above and beyond constructing my miniature, scaled-down pole lines, I also derived much pleasure by habitually drawing countless varieties of utility poles in notebooks. My imagination used to go rather wild. Meticulous, specific attention with detail was always given to every aspect of my illustrations, particularly to the insulators on my “paper pole lines.” Needless to say, Santa was very generous with pens, paper and pencils each Christmas!

A few days after Christmas 1960, Joe poses with his sister and brother by the family’s Christmas tree. Joe is shown proudly holding his first, undamaged insulator -- a “present” he found just prior to when this photo was taken.

Having been an insulator enthusiast for several years, it was not until I was nearly nine years old when I acquired my very first specimen. That was when a powerful hurricane tore through New England during the fall of 1960. The eye of the storm had passed right over the city I lived in and the aftermath was an awesome littering of trees, branches, poles, wires and other debris strewn in our neighborhood’s streets. It was a sight I’ll never forget. My pursuit was to capture one of those neat looking glass or porcelain objects used on crossarms which wires were attached to.

Utility crews evidently were faced with a shortage of insulators and must have quickly recovered unbroken specimens for reuse for rebuilding damaged lines. However, that was like discovering pure gold to me because I finally got to own my first two insulators! You’ll never know how happy I was!! The pair were similarly glazed, speckled tan colored U-292 “hats.” Prior to my find, those were my favorite porcelain pintypes to look at atop poles and very much continued to be! (And still are!). My two insulators displayed nicely from their unbroken sides, and I always proudly carried them around looking at them on the wooden pins they were found with.

I was truly fascinated with my two finds and the pursuit for more insulators commenced immediately thereafter. It wasn’t until late December of that year when I got my first, whole, undamaged insulator. While electric utility crews were working on a pole about a block away from my home, I took notice while watching them that one of the linemen tossed what looked like an insulator down onto the ground, about 6 to 10 feet away from the pole’s base. It actually landed on someone’s front lawn and I knew it survived because there was about four inches of snow on the ground. Fearing the answer would be an undeniably, coldhearted, undisputable “No!” if I had asked for it, and feeling reasonably confident that the line crew wouldn’t miss it anyway, I maneuvered closer to the insulator’s new resting spot. I now could see the hole in the snow where it was hiding. While keeping a close, careful eye on who was looking around at the utility’s truck, when the coast became clear (it seemed like hours, but it was really only a few minutes), I expediently went for the piece. I could see the object tossed down really was an insulator and was undamaged too! While the coast was still clear, I immediately put the insulator into my coat pocket and scurried directly for home, short cutting through a few back yards.

I was very proud of this dear prize and I owned this insulator for many years. I was so proud, in fact, that most places I went the insulator traveled with me too (except to school, of course!). That was the case for a long time. I don’t know whatever happened to that insulator, however, I loved it and it headed me on the way to collecting many hundreds more in following years. The insulator, by the way, was a brownish, unmarked U-308. It appeared accompanying me in numerous family photographs.