May 3, 2016 3 min read

Have you ever wondered how much of your life you waste doing stupid things? I read the average person spends 25 years sleeping, one year cleaning and three months in traffic. We spend the equivalent of one year in the bathroom. The time I recently wasted trying to resolve utility issues pales in comparison to those numbers, but it’s still hours of my life I will never get back.

I mentioned in a previous column that the utility pole in our front yard suffered some trauma. Our neighbor’s security camera revealed a tractor-trailer sideswiped it, then fled. Why a tractor-trailer was in our neighborhood is beyond me, but the camera failed to capture a license plate, so police called it “hit-and-run.”

The blow knocked out our power, but the power company worked overnight to put up a brand new pole and streetlight, and had electricity restored by morning. I then discovered our home phone and internet service were out, so I called the phone company. They said they had no record of an outage, which convinced me we were the only dinosaurs on the planet with a landline and DSL internet service. Their crew found they needed to bury a new line under our yard and strung a temporary phone line from the pole across our lawn to the outside of the house. Across our lawn. Later, they informed us it might be three weeks until they could bury the line, and I envisioned us lifting the cord to mow the lawn.

Luckily, a crew came out that week to bury it but said they couldn’t flip the switch because they were just subcontractors. Then the real phone company workers went on strike. Fed up with it all, I switched service to wireless and canceled the landline and Internet. Trying to reach them to officially close the account took another week since the call center employees were also on strike. Annoying, yes, but I have to say everyone I spoke with from each company was extremely nice and tried to help.

Our new wireless service is up and running, but there’s one lingering problem: the splintered old utility pole. It’s still standing in our yard dangling from utility wires and now tied to the new pole with twine. The power company says they can remove it once other utilities relocate their wires. I asked if they were all in contact, and they said no. Whose pole is it anyway?

The power company determined it probably belongs to them, while the cable company promised to send someone out to check but never did. The jurisdictional dilemma has now been referred to some sort of utility liaison, who I’m hoping will negotiate the Potsdam Accord of The Power Pole and get it removed. If not, could we chop it down and say it was a “hit-and-run?”

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.