Alberta Online Encyclopedia
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Archie the Linemen - Page 5 [<<Previous][Next>>] )
"I have five locals out." Miss Cuthiell had saved the worst for the last. "Toll Line 116 is out north of Perryvale" meant that Athabasca, Lac La Biche and Calling Lake were isolated from the rest of the AGT network. Archie underlined Perryvale on his map and asked for Mr. Craswell, the agent there. Mr. Craswell was agent for almost everything else, as the picture shows, so it was logical that he would represent AGT as well. His familiar voice came down the line: "Hi, cowboy, coming to see us soon?" "As soon as I can," Archie laughed. "It's seven miles to Clyde and twenty-two to your place. Dios and I should be there tomorrow night. How's the weather north of you?" Mr. Craswell told Archie what he'd heard from northern operators before the break, and from travellers afterwards. What he'd heard added up to a certainty that the wind and snow had been much heavier in the north.
"Hold the line open and we'll see what the trouble is," said Archie. In city offices the telephone men had megameters, which gave an exact reading of the distance to the trouble spot. The megameter put an exact charge on the line, one that lost 66 ohms per mile in transmission. Divide the reading on the meter by 66 ohms and it gave the distance within a few yards. But Archie and the district men had nothing so sophisticated. They had to play it by ear, gauging the distance by how much noise the telltale made. Archie cranked and listened, again and again. He worked out the location to be about three miles beyond Perryvale. Then he cranked once more, to be sure. And the telltale was silent. Archie sat back and reached among his tools for a cigarette. He said "Ho ho ho," softly but clearly enough so that Mrs. Selfridge inquired whether Santa Claus was behind the board. Archie staged in his mind an instant replay of the dramatic action which had just taken place out there in the night. He could see a pole, leaning at a critical angle, driven over by the wind. He could see the crossarm, which had twisted to bring two wires together and cause the short. Then he saw the pole lean one degree too much. He saw it tremble and go down, taking half a dozen others with it, breaking wires as they fell. Then, from the replay, he switched to a preview of the next night's episode. He saw Dios Smith and himself arriving at the scene of the wreckage. They'd unbolt the crossarms from the fallen poles and stand each one against a fence or brushpile. They'd untangle the broken wires and splice them, and reattach them to the insulators. Then Archie would clip his butt-in to Toll Line 116 and talk to Sim Lewis, the jovial agent at Athabasca. And out there in the still whiteness Archie would hear Sim tell him whether he and Dios and the horses would turn for home or go on north to spend days splicing the system back together again. From past experience and the report he'd heard of conditions in the north Archie had little doubt which direction they'd be taking. It was said of Archie Hollingshead that he did things well. He worked well, he told a story well, he got along well with people, he ate well. And having prepared well for the journey he went home and slept well. Snug inside the covers he switched off his problems as totally as Bob Wheatley doused the town lights at midnight. He slept, deep and detached from care, nonetheless with a subconscious listening device turned on in his mind. He slept dreamless and with time suspended, until a strange sound tripped the telltale in his subconscious. He came awake and listened. Intently. He opened his eyes and looked about the darkened room. No doubt about it. The sound which had broken his slumber was the sound of silence. The wind which had dominated his working and sleeping for so many hours was gone. Archie crept to the window, gently so as not to jar the silence. Just as gently he drew the curtain and gazed out on a poet's scene. In a steel-blue sky a half moon shed the last trailing cloud and burst forth like a moon at the full, its light overflowing a familiar world in which every detail was mysteriously altered by snow and moonshadow. A rabbit stood upright, nose twitching in vain to establish the direction of the wind. It looked about, then hopped off, its protective coat of winter white shown in the dazzling moonlight to be a mere gray. The scene was made for a poet but there was no time for poetry. Archie had a job to do. [<<Previous][Next>>] Copyright © 2004 Heritage Community Foundation and Telephone Historical Centre All Rights Reserved |
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