[GreenKeys] Open wire lines

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I went to work for Southwestern Bell in 1972 out in western Kansas after a move from Pacific Tel & Tel.  Lots of open wire around there and some of the towns 35 miles apart out in the west were interconnected with open wire, phantom circuits, transpositions and all that good stuff including the voltages that would make the hair under your arm curl up if you got across the wires.  I recall a 3 arm lead that went north out of town to about the county line and then one arm broke off and headed east to another settlement.  I enjoyed working the wire myself.  Take the necessary splices and coils of spare wire, some copper and some iron, a ladder and a couple of block and tackles and head into the sunrise or sunset, whichever way you happened to have to go.  

Usually when a toll lead went down more than one person went out on it,  get it back together as fast as possible.  Prop up the broken poles, if that's what happened with pole pikes or push them back into position with the truck and tie them off with ropes or wire.  Always had spare glass and ties for replacing the stuff that poeple who had nothing better to do than shoot at the insulators.  

By the late 70's our open wire was pretty well gone.  As we lost stuff in storms, we would patch the lines up best we could and then they would engineer a job to replace the line with underground cable.  Might take a couple of years to get it done but it was progress.  

Around 1974 we did a massive "cutover " project out south of town.  Everything south of the city was buried.  I got to do the splicing on that job, every last one of them down thru the sandhills which was rattlesnake country.   When you walked over to the pedestal where the new cable was you walked with care.  Usually carried a shovel with me to fend off any vicious critters who might be lounging around the work area.  Pull the top cover off the pedestal and take a look inside to see who had made it their new home, then set up camp and go to work.  Winter time which was when the field forces did their stuff cause the "engineers" only came out to the countryside when the weather was warm.  If the splice was big enuff we would set up a tent but if it was only a couple hundred pairs or less we just wrapped up in a tent and did the ebst we could against the wind and blowing "whatever"!  

After the cable was all spliced up and we had tested the pairs from the office to each end out in the field, the business office would start issuing orders as to who was going on what facility and if they were to be on a single party, two (2) party or 4 party line.  Nothing more was available.  If people wanted to be on a 4 party line because of the cost and no one else in their area wanted to share it, they got essentially a private single party line for the cost of a 4 party line which was much cheaper.  Lots of the old wood wall telephones became available.  Some of the older guys knew who out there had them and at cutover time made their collections.  Most all the telephones were replaced or rewired because they had the "tube" ringer circuits in them. Learned a lot on those projects.

Well cutover time again was always in the dead of winter.  Know what "burning a pole" is?  well i did that more than once and thank goodness for the cold weather i was dressed heavily so no splinters got thru to the bod!  But that's scary to say the least and another thing, we were cutting service from open wire with short poles, maybe 20 ft at the most to underground.  With a lot of snow around the poles if you happened to cut out with your hooks, you didn't ahve far to go and the landing "could" be soft!  One thing about it, no diamondbacks around to greet you when you landed on the ground.  But even though it was cold and snowy, you always checked out the inside of the pedestal before sticking you hands in there to grab any wires.

In this case it took us about 6 weeks to cut all the rural folks over to underground service.  Out in that country we had wide bar ditches so you didn't ahve to park on the side of the road and walk across the ditch.  heck we just drove down in the ditch and up to the pole/pedestal.  Made it nice when it was cold or rainy, just pull up to the pedestal, pull the lid off and find a pair to hook onto to make your call.  Beings as the whole county was one exchange there were charges anyone incurred from your using their line to call back to the test center.

Most all the pole lines are gone.  Farmers got to take them down if they wanted the poles.  Saved the company money.  The iron wire wasn't worh anything so hard to tell where it went.  The copper from the toll facilites was removed by a contractor though as it had to go back thru the company disposal process.  Copper was cash and Ma liked to keep track of it.

What fun.  And i wouldn't trade the experience for anything.  It really was a great life and Ma took care of their employees.  Best decision i ever made was to go to work for Pacific Tel & Tel in 1968.  You could go anyplace in the company you wanted to if you had the desire and drive.

Larry
W0OGH
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