Catching Flies with Honey

Last week, on Wednesday morning, I happened to glance out the front window and saw some big equipment in the street.

There was a truck with a smaller truckish-thing on it. And there was a much larger truck thing with two very large utility-looking poles on it. And there was a guy standing by the curb, sort of between our yard and the neighbors’, holding a post-hole digger-ish sort of thing. And I thought maybe I should go out and investigate.

“Hi,” I said politely, to the guys standing by the trucks. “I’m curious about what sort of work you’re going to be doing.”

“There’s a broken pole,” they said. “We think it’s that one.” They pointed to the back corner of my yard. “Ah,” I said. “We’re waiting to find out exactly which one,” they said. And I said, “Well, I was just wondering,” and I went back into the house. Where I had another thought, and went back out.

“Will I lose power?” “Oh, no,” they said. Today, they were just putting in a new pole, right next to the old pole. Then the electric company guys would come out some other time and move all the wires and stuff to the new pole. Then they would come back and remove the old pole.

Oh. So I went back in. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. This guy was somebody in charge. “I saw you talking to my guys,” he said. “I was curious,” I said.

He explained, again, that a pole was broken and they were going to put a new pole in, right next to old pole, at the back corner of our lot.

Aside: Technically, there’s an easement that runs down the center of the block, land that belongs to the city, where the poles are. We have a hedge, dating back to my childhood, at the back of our lot. The people behind us have a fence on their lotline. And there’s a space in between the hedge and fence where I walk around when I’m raking and cleaning up brush and twigs. It’s not my space; it belongs to the city. That’s where the poles are.

“Let me show you what we need to do,” the young man said. “We have this machine that we bring. It does less tearing up than anything else, but we’ll have to take it back through here,” and he pointed to my side yard.

“Okay,” I said. “But that’s not my tree. It’s my neighbor’s.”  And I indicated the large tree between our homes. “It’ll go through,” he said, and I was pretty sure it could, because last year we bought a storage shed that came in pieces for us (David and Kevin and April) to put together. A little forklift carried the big pallet of pieces through that same area with no difficulty.

“I’m more worried about these trees,” he said, pointing back to the hedges. We walked on back there where several work guys were standing, looking things over. There’s a pretty big crepe myrtle back there, too. “This tree,” I asked. “No, no,” he said. “That tree’s fine.” (Whew) “These.” He pointed to a couple of the hedges, which I can see why he said “trees,” because they are pretty tall and should be trimmed back, but, that’s a discussion for a different time. A way different time.

“Well,” I said. “If they have to go, they have to go. You have to do your work. And, by the way (pointing to the back fence), that’s not my fence. It’s those neighbors’.”
“Yes, I’ve already talked to them,” he said.

“Well, there you go,” I said.

They all stood there for a few minutes, then someone said, “Well, we could come from the other direction. The other yard.” They looked over that fence. The fence is wooden, but in that corner of their yard, there’s an area with a chain-link fence. “That’s just a dog run,” someone said. “Well, maybe,” the guy in charge said.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” I said, and went back inside. Living in a community means being cooperative when there’s work to do that benefits everyone–a conversation we had when the electric company guys came out and severely cut back trees from the power lines.

Later, another worker was at the door, asking if they could use a hose. They were down to rock, and sometimes, he said, water helped. I said, yes, and use the blue hose; it was the only one that was long enough to reach all the way to the back, and let me know if it didn’t work because it hadn’t been used since last year. I went out a few minutes later and saw that, yes, the blue hose was working fine and they had, indeed, brought the digging machine into the other neighbors’ yard, and they had lopped off only three insignificant limbs from one hedge.

The next time I looked out, everyone was gone, the blue hose was neatly coiled up, back in its basket, and I would have never known they’d been there at all, except for the fact that there are now two poles at the back corner of my yard. It might have taken me ages to notice that.

And I am convinced that they went through the other yard instead of mine because I was nice.

Pleasant words are like a honeycomb,

I’ve gotten to the point where I take pictures of everything, because I often want them here. But, I neglected to get photographs of these trucks that came to my street. The one with the digger thing on it and the one with the large poles on it. I went online to see if I could find some photo to show you what they looked like. I googled the phrase “utility poles on a truck,” and this is what I got. Not exactly what I was looking for.