Heroes on the High Wires

Bruce Thompson cocks his head toward an electric-blue Pasadena sky and plainly announces that he isn’t afraid of those juiced-up wires, isn’t fazed by the dizzying heights or the physical labor of shimmying up all those snaggletoothed utility poles.

At age 40, Thompson is a flinty-eyed kind of urban cowboy, a man whose talents are a throwback to another era, but whose labors are still critical to modern-day consumers who expect to merely flip a switch and have the lights come on.

He is an electrical crew foreman for Southern California Edison, the on-site boss for a crew of Victorville linemen, sun-bleached workers who climb the 65-foot poles in all kinds of weather, maintaining the voltage that keeps all those home security alarms at the ready, those refrigerators running and the high wires singing.

On Saturday, Thompson was just one tough competitor in the 14th annual Lineman Rodeo runoffs sponsored by Edison and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 47 union. For the three dozen hard-hat-wearing laborers who gathered in the dusty pole-littered field at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, it was truly the survival of the fittest.

As the judges looked on, 12 three-man Edison teams from across Southern California competed in timed events, including pole-climbing, rope-splicing and “hurt man” rescues, to determine which four teams would go on to represent the company at the National Lineman’s Rodeo in Kansas City later this summer.

Thompson has been to Kansas City before. He knows what this day is all about; how the judges are looking for speed, agility and, perhaps foremost, an eye toward safety.

Although the work done by his fellow linemen rarely if ever makes headlines, he knows it has earned a romantic, though every-man footnote in American popular culture, ever since country singer Glenn Campbell crooned about the lonely “Wichita Lineman.”

“There’s a lot of pride in this line of work,” Thompson said. “When we get the lights back on after an outage, people have been known to come out of their houses and cheer us on. They’re glad to see us and they appreciate what we do.”

On Saturday, Thompson and his two partners were out to show they could work faster and more efficiently than any lineman in the land.

*

They had practiced for weeks for this competition, climbing poles and running wires, keeping the sweat out of their eyes and their safety belts harnessed.

Because negotiating the high wires can be deadly work. In the last 12 months alone, three Southern California Edison linemen have been killed on duty--two of them former competitors in the rodeo. Two died when a transformer exploded and the third was electrocuted.

“They were all good men,” Thompson said. “But it’s often dangerous work up there. A wire doesn’t look any different when it’s energized than when it’s not a live one.”

Add injuries from falls, the back sprains and other bumps and bruises and it becomes obvious that pole climbing isn’t work suited for everyone.

“Some guys may say they want to be linemen, but they don’t really know until they go to climbing school,” said Rich Jimenez, a 36-year-old linemen on Thompson’s team. “That’s when they find out if they have it or not.”

There’s one-upmanship on the wires. Utility workers on the ground who don’t climb are known as “grunts.” But Thompson knows the prestige of high-climbing has its hazards.

Years ago, he was blindsided and knocked nearly unconscious by a swinging pole while on top of the wires. “I collapsed into my safety belt,” he recalled. “My dad, a former lineman who was climbing next to me, saved my life. He climbed down his pole and came up mine to get me.”

On Saturday, Thompson and his team spliced ropes, hauled down an 185-pound dummy and eased down a pole without breaking an egg held in their mouths, all to take first place in the rodeo and earn a trip back to Kansas City. They were joined by teams from Rialto, Tulare and San Jacinto.

Watching intently was a 19-year-old meter reader from Redlands who aches to climb among the high wires.

David Jones learned the craft as a boy from his father, Charlie, a veteran lineman who was killed last year while doing the job he loved.

That hasn’t stopped David from wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps. “It’s gotta be the greatest job in the world, providing a service to people. Everybody needs power.”

In the back of his mind, he keeps a snapshot of the day the men came with the news about his dad. His mother doesn’t want him to climb poles. His older brother is afraid of heights.

But David still wants to climb. “Hey, policemen get shot, firefighters get burned. And once or twice every century, a lineman gets killed.”