son of witless

It is what being the Patriarch is all about. You do what ever it takes for the good of the family. If I had a drop of Italian blood coursing through my veins I might rename myself Vito Coreleone. Unfortunately that is not the case. So I eat Italian food and f**e it.

I have to be happy with my Celtic-Russian C********es. My forebears could out drink all comers.

Ricktloml

New Castle, New Hampshire; 2019

"I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you. I guarantee you we're going to end f****l f**ls": Joe Biden

son of witless

It sounds like a declaration of war on his own country. Our Mad Pharaoh/Emperor wants what he wants, no matter the cost.

RandyBrian Loc: Texas

LOL! I would never even consider competing against you, Godfather!

Big Bass

You believe a cartoon of an elephant. Seek help!

son of witless

Actually I am a rather poor example of my Scotch/Irish/Welsh-Russian heritage. I can drink, but I have a brother who is a much better representative of the family honor. He can drink 4 to my 1. I had a grandfather who according to family legend could have bought more than a few bars with the money he spent buying rounds of drinks in those bars.

He was reformed, broken down, and dried out by the time I came along. If he had been a teetotaler I might be as rich and spoiled now as a Kennedy, a Pelosi, or even a Clinton. Oh well, I guess leaving my grand kids a good family name is better than wealth. Yea, that is what I will tell them.

RandyBrian Loc: Texas

With the current administration, wealth is extremely t***sitory, anyway.

son of witless

I'm in the last fifth of my life span. If wealth is going to grace my life with it's presence, even t***sitory, it better get busy t***siting.

manning5 Loc: Richmond, VA

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I hear you! But you posed me a math problem. If you are in your upper fifth, I have to figure out my fraction. After some paper torture, I believe I am in my upper tenth, assuming 100 is the upper limit. Maybe I should make a more advantageous assumption!

son of witless

I have already outlived my father's life span by 7 years. Most of the males in my relation did not live long. My one uncle who did make it to 85 had his guts shot out in a hunting accident when he was 30 years old. Go figure.

I hopefully take after the female lines. My Mom only made it to 79, but her older sister is 89, and their mother was about 89 when she passed. It isn't just the number you reach. Some people have low quality of life for 10 or 20 years before God finally takes them. When I installed phone lines I saw a woman in a nursing home who was 107. She didn't look happy to still be alive. The only part on her that was good was her false teeth.

manning5 Loc: Richmond, VA

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I am very fortunate that at 92 come December I am still fairly mobile, still can understand the funny papers, and keep myself here alone in good Bristol fashion! (Never been to Bristol, except in Tennessee.) The good genes seem to have come from my mother's side. Good Scottish genes! She died at 96, and my grandfather died at 97.

So you installed lines! Did you use those climbing spikes?

son of witless

I came to phone work a little late in life. 31 does not sound old, but it is to learn to climb polls. I did it, but I was never good at it. The guys who could climb like squirrels, learned when they were 18-20 years old. Even those guys never climbed unless they absolutely had to. When I was there bucket trucks were becoming more common, and the older you got the better you got at getting your truck off the road, even to the point of damaging the truck, so that you wouldn't have to put the gaffs on or pull your fiberglass extension ladder off the racks.

I would carry the ladder 200 yards into the woods before I would climb a poll . But I did climb. What you wanted was a nice fat 40 footer not too fat, but the worst were the skinny peanut polls. 18 footers, thin and leaning were scary.

You also did not want to climb polls that had been climbed by a thousand other guys. Every time you climb, you damage the poll. Some polls got climbed so much in the days before bucket trucks that they put in curved bars called steps so you wouldn't have to gaff them.

You have a climbing belt, that when you get where you are going you buckle in so you can work hands free. Most guys did not use the belt to climb, but when they did it was called hitch hiking. The last thing you must know is to keep your knees angled so that you gaff at an angle into the poll. When you are new your tendency is to climb with your knees against the poll, which causes the gaff to plane out like a wood plane and down you go.

As I said I was never as good as the old timers, but better than a few who came after me and could not climb. I once did the ultimate in mistakes on a pole. I never lived it down. I gaffed my foot. Right through the boot into the toe. I finished the job, came down, pulled off the climbing boot. My sock was full of blood. The old timers never stopped razzing me about that.

RandyBrian Loc: Texas

Were you and an installer, a splicer, or in new construction? I spent 32 years in Outside Plant Engineering with GTE/Verizon.

son of witless

Yes. I worked for an independent and did a little of all, but I was primarily an installer. I basically knew nothing, and had to be taught it all. The biggest thing was learning how to run 4 conductor through a house. I got to do some splicing and construction. The trouble is when you don't do it everyday and you get called out to help with poles and phone cables laying across a highway at 3 AM it is fun. Sometimes, I was the only available CDL driver, and when you haven't driven the line truck for 5 years, there I am with a pole trailer and a 45 foot pole on it, trying not to destroy the one lane bridges I had to drive over.

I have a lot of good stories.

RandyBrian Loc: Texas

It's nice to run into another old style phone guy. I had to learn to climb poles in 1978, but my job did not require it very often, and so I was never very good at it. But you are right....nothing like climbing a skinny 30 footer on a windy day to make you think about how wonderful the solid ground is. And I H**ED climbing poles that were well used. All I could see was all those 'thorns' sticking out, ready to shred my hide if I should burn the pole. We had it drummed into us that if you fell, shove as far from the pole as you can.....but that was impossible if you were belted. I never burned one, but I rendered first aid to several who did.