Yesterday, my son cut down a tree that was partly dead and dying and dropping dead limbs over the fence onto our neighbor's property. He had two cables attached to it and to his Ford F-350 4x4 and to his big tractor. But, as you would expect, things didn't go according to plan. For some unknown reason, it fell parallel to the fence and part of it landed on the fence and its top few branches hit the top uninsulated power line and started arcing and smoking. So, I called the power company because that tree was hot; my son got shocked from it.
That sounds simple, right?? No, I was on the phone for quite awhile. First, had to go through computer generated questions (and nowhere was there a place to say it was an emergency). Finally, I got an option to talk to a real person. Yep, you guessed it, another long "on hold" until I finally got someone to talk to. They were real helpful and said luckily they had a crew working late not far from me and they would come and take care of the problem, which they did:
With that taken care of last night, and with the electric back on (and the AC), we got back to a normal life. Of course I had to dream about fishing and catching a huge sting ray:
Yes, I know it is a leaf, but it looks like a sting ray to me. I guess I need to go fishing, it has been too long since I have.
Today, a friend of ours stopped by. He is the one that owns a twin to my Jeep. They are identical except his is not four wheel drive. They wanted their picture taken together (yes, I know I have posted the two of them together in the past, but they insisted).
OK, had enough excitement and enough being out in the humidity. I reached out with my hand to grab a mosquito that was buzzing me and just got a handful of water. . . Now, you all stay cool and dry and have a great day, you hear?
In something like that, we would call 911 and let them notify the right place to call.
ReplyDeleteThe tree is down and since I have a loop driveway, I can still get out and in. My son will get the tree cut up when he can. It isn't hurting anything now.
DeleteLove those Jeeps. I'll never stop missing my Grand Cherokee.
DeleteI have had many 4x4's over my lifetime and I have enjoyed them all.
DeleteThat electric stuff is scary.... Nothing to mess with. My son survived 18,ooo volts of electric, but spent 3 months in the burn unit of children's hospital. Be careful!
ReplyDeleteWow, 18,000 volts!! It must have been low amperage. Remember those Van de Graaff generators we used to play with in science class? Real high voltage, hardly any amps. We use to make a human chain and then whoever had his hand on the sphere, would quickly jerk it off and everyone got a shock.
DeleteYour son was lucky it didn't turn out worse. I find it's almost impossible to get a human on the phone with my local power company. There is never an option for the thing I want to talk about either.
ReplyDeleteYes, I was lucky but I may have helped that luck along telling them that it was arcing and smoking and the downed tree shocked my son. And yes, it took a lot of patients and "press 1 for this option" until I got to a person.
DeleteThankfully, the situation didn't turn out worse. I hope your son wasn't too shocked and is okay now. Nice Jeeps!
ReplyDeleteHave a good one, eh.
Gary
Son is fine. Thanks, the jeeps are about ten years old but mine runs great and has almost 50,000 driven miles on it and quite a few more thousands of miles being towed behind the motorhome.
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