When I discussed hitting the telephone pole awhile back, and then followed up with a post on whatever became of Tommy White, I did not anticipate doing anymore telephone pole-related posts. However, here’s another, and I promise the final, installment of what I will call my telephone pole trilogy.
A visitor to the Store last week was wearing a lime green flak jacket so I asked him where he was working. Turns out that he works for a company named Osmose (click here) that has been contracted by SMECO and Verizon to do a telephone pole audit to determine who owns which poles.
When I asked how he could identify which pole belongs to which company, we walked outside and he showed me how the poles are identified via an inspection of two poles there in front of the Store.
Sure enough, the poles were branded and tagged with the one near the Buzzy flagpole belonging to SMECO and the other one (shown above) located adjacent the lower driveway entrance being owned by Verizon. (Pole is marked C&P MD 64 from the former telephone company. The Osmose tag below C&P’s indicates that Osmose inspected it back in 2009. ) He explained that approximately 35% of the poles are generally owned by Verizon but that thru the years, as the poles get knocked down, it is SMECO who ends up replacing them due to the emergency nature of electrical wires being downed. Because SMECO and Verizon charge each other for pole usage, as well as split fees from the local cable T-V company for using their poles, they need an accurate inventory of who owns which pole. Hence the need for a periodic audit/survey.
I told the rep about my having to pay the phone company for the pole I destroyed back in the 70’s when I wiped out the one in front of Sonny Dean’s house. The Osmose rep told me that I was good for their business because that pole was probably replaced by SMECO and their subsequent audit would have revealed that pole records needed to be updated accordingly. (Just for grins, I checked “my” pole out and it is a SMECO pole, one that I hope stays up for a very long time.)