Manual labor…

Over the past several weeks I have been doing some serious manual labor. It was not to busy myself so as to relieve some stress from these past events, but something that came about.

I woke one morning and got out of bed and turned on the light. Well, I thought I did. Switch didn’t seem to be working. So I moved to another light, no luck there either. Hmm, something funny here, did a break a circuit or something.

So I head to the basement and all breakers are fine. This is starting to get me concerned, so I look out the window as the sunrise is approaching so I can see if the neighbors have lights. They all look fine, I see lights all over.

Back to the basement to look things over and I cannot see anything out of place. So I wait for a respectable time and call my neighbor and ask about their power. They say nothing going on all is well.

Next thing was to call the power company. They will dispatch someone sometime. That was their response, someone at sometime. Four hours later a van arrives. She tests the power to my meter and tells me that there is a problem. I am not getting power to my meter, well, not a lot of power, some, not enough to mean anything.

She goes out and tests the power at the electric box on the curb, and says there is plenty of power there that my line from the box to the house is bad. My line bad, what does that mean I ask her. She says someone will be out, hopefully today to look at it.

So I wait. Another four hours pass and he shows up. He drops a line on the ground from the box to my house and connects this new line to the house. He asks me to sign, and I ask what am I signing. He tells me it is an agreement that I have five days to replace the power line!

What, there is some mistake you are the power company you replace the power line. He says they are not responsible for the underground power line from the street to my house. That is the homeowners problem, and in five days they come back and roll up the temporary one if I have a new one or not.

I call my son-in-law as he is a certified electrician, he pops over and takes a look. He says I need to get a trench at least 18” deep from the box to the house, and at least a three foot perimeter around each box for working room to attach the new cable that I have to go buy. He tells me what type of cable and where to get it and the connectors and the best place to get a trenching machine.

He tells me that he does a job like this for a starting price of $1500. As I know he is busy making money to support my three grandchildren I tell him I will get all the manual work done and all he will have to do and certify the work and call the power company back.

We call a company called DigNY as required in NY State, so they will come out and mark everything, TV, telephone, Gas line and so on. They did, they came out and marked everything. So I ripped a 100’ trench across my lawn. 24” deep 12” wide. Ugly mess.

I buy the power line, and get it all set. My son-in-law shows up and installs the connectors and calls the power company to tell them we are all set. However, a neighbor arrives home and tells me her phone is out. Hmm I don’t recall hitting any telephone line or anything like that. So we crawl into the ditch and start rummaging around. There at the bottom is a spaghetti mess. It seems we tore out the entire neighborhoods phone lines, a 200 line phone cable.

We call the phone company they arrive the next day and start talking about how much it will cost me to have them repair it! I show them where they, the phone company, marked the line. I was clearly at least 20’ from the markings. They looked and finally agreed I was indeed a good 20’ from the markings and repaired the line.

It took two technicians all day to repair the line. I stayed home and offered them coffee and so on as it was a cold windy March day though it was April.

After the repair we waited for the power company to arrive and waited and waited. They arrived the following week, not the five days I was told. It was ten days until they came back, I was not happy as I took several days off to meet their timeline.

Well we have power now, and I can say it was more manual labor than I have done in quite some time. I think of myself as being pretty fit, granted I can stand to lose a pound or two and maybe spend more time in the gym, well, spend some time there anyway. But I am no slouch just the same. It was good to get in there and dig and then bury the cable.

All the labor I did myself with my sons help of course, a five year old can move some dirt with a shovel. He had a blast playing with it anyway.

Hard lesson learned. I had no idea that I was responsible for the power cable; I had always assumed the power company was for everything to the meter that is attached to side of my house. But that does not seem to be the case.

I also learned that I do miss working with my hands and body. I miss felling that close to the ground, the earth and my environment. My work has me in an office all day, and having been raised on a farm, it is becoming hard to resist the pull to be back outside. At the time I hated farm work, it was work relentless and all consuming. Today I find I miss that hard work.

All five of my brother’s work outside with their hands, and for years I have been riding them about it. Why don’t they get inside, and earn more money and not work so hard. Perhaps my goal for that was more self-centered than I thought, perhaps I wanted to justify my choice and needed at least one of them to do so.

I am the one missing out, not them. Maybe its time to reconsider some career choices, and look back to see where I came from. Maybe it’s just that midlife thing people talk about.