Sitting in the “Lab for Creative Ideas,” I had just hung up the phone after talking to my Patent attorney, Butch Cassidy whom, like his historical namesake, was trying to rob me blind. Apparently, ideas #407, the stick gum dispenser, and #408, the “Sleepy Sling” baby carrier had proven to be unpatentable in his findings during patent searches.
It was a time of my life where I wanted to be known as an inventor. Though Butch had been able to secure two patents for me, a hunting tree stand and a music stand cover, he now realized that he could make quite a bit of money off me by just doing patent searches. What I sadly realized was, that being creative and being a marketer of my ideas were two separate things. The second of which I was not good at.
At this point in life, I was in between jobs and in need of cash. Casually looking through the local “Five Center Want Ads”, I noticed in the “Help Wanted” section an ad for pole climbers. The local cable company was conducting an audit of all their cable connections to make sure there was no piracy going on. Although some connections were in boxes on the ground, a majority were on the power poles in front of the home. This required pole climbers to go up the poles and read the serial number off a plastic tag at the connection.
It just so happened that living behind me was my adopted grandfather, Elwood K. Wayson, aka. “Swede”. He spent his working career in the woods as a spar-pole setter. A job where he climbed fir trees to the top while limbing and topping them. He then attached a block and tackle which ran cable to pull the logged timber. After he left logging, he became a lineman for the local power company. This was useful because Swede, now retired and in his 80s, had climbing spurs. I made a quick trip to his house. He was watching “Gunsmoke” and sipping “Canadian Mist” whisky.
“So, you want to climb poles,” he slurred. “It ain’t as easy as it looks, but I’ll let you borrow mine if you’re feeling brave.”
This should have been a warning signal, but I didn’t catch his hint.
He retrieved the ancient climbing spurs and belt which were hanging from a nail on his back porch and after showing me how to strap the spurs to my legs and the belt to my waist we walked to the power pole in his yard. I noticed as I walked in the driveway gravel that the spurs made a “jingle, jangle, jingle” sound.
“Now, when climbing a pole, it is important to make sure that each spur is solidly stuck in the pole as you climb. Elsewise, if one spur kicks out the other one will too, and you will fall off the pole.” (Again, an obvious hint that this may be a bad idea.)
“Start with your belt around the pole as high as you can get it and then climb up the pole until your belt is even with your waist. Then raise the belt higher up the pole. Best case scenario if your spurs kick out, you can use the belt to suck yourself into the pole to reattach a spur. Worst case scenario, the belt will hold you against the pole all the way down and fill your body with creosote slivers.” (Why wasn’t I hearing these warnings?)
“Lastly, it may feel scary but lean out away from the pole in your belt. This is a good angle for the spur to stay in the pole. If you suck in too close to the pole, your spurs will pop out and of course you will fall to the ground. Capiche?”
Then it sank in. Swede obviously did not understand my athletic prowess. I went to the pole, tossed my belt around it, put one spur in and the other slightly higher. I then stood with both spurs in the pole. Success! There is nothing hard about this. But then I found that I could not move the belt up any higher. This required a coordination move of putting slack in the belt enough to allow me to slide it up higher. I kept climbing up with the spurs until my knees were sucked up next to my belly button and still could not slide the belt up the pole.
“I can see that you’re going to be a whiz at this job, unless you have to climb higher than two feet,” Swede chuckled.
Eventually I did catch on to how they worked and decided the first trial of the spurs would be to climb a tree while deer hunting. Packing up my hunting gear I drove up into the hills to a clear-cut I had been watching for deer sign. It was late afternoon when I found the perfect cottonwood tree to climb. It was tall and had a nice group of limbs to sit in. Leaving my rifle on the ground with a light rope tied to it, I climbed the trunk of the tree with the climbing gear. Once safely reaching the limbs, I unhooked the belt, climbed up into them, and sat down. Pulling the rifle up by the rope, I was ready to hunt.
Two hours later the sun was setting, and an icy fog was rolled into the clear-cut, so it was time to go home. After lowering the rifle back to the ground, I was set to climb down the tree when I realized a predicament — how do I get below the limbs, stick my spurs in the trunk and hook up my belt while hanging from the limb with both hands? The obvious answer was to use the rope attached to the gun to repel to the bottom. Brilliant!
Grabbing both halves of rope tightly, the end coming up from the ground attached to the gun and the other end draped over a limb, I lowered myself below the limbs and stuck both spurs into the tree trunk. Then working both pieces of rope I started down the tree. This worked for approximately one foot when the unusual angle kicked out my spurs. Sliding down the trunk, the spurs peeled off bark like they were potato peelers. Meanwhile, the two halves of rope started burning through my hands as the rifle lifted off the ground and was accelerating up into the air. We met mid-way, the rifle hitting my shoulder with such force that it pulled the ropes from my burning palms. The freefall to the ground took hardly any time at all and I was pleasantly surprised that I landed in a pile of branches and not hard ground. This second of appreciation was followed by the rifle free-falling out of the tree and landing butt-end on my stomach. As I lay on my back watching the deer slowly re-enter the clear-cut, I thought I could hear the spurs jingle- jangle- jingle.
A week later the cable company job started. We were given an area of the county that the company had subscribers. Being contractors, they gave us no identification. Basically, I appeared to be a random strange guy in a neighborhood climbing poles for no apparent reason. This explained why twice, homeowners called the Sheriff claiming that I was casing their neighborhood to rob it. I never weary of riding in the back of a patrol car.
The company was paying 50 cents per audited customer. Speed made me good money and it became apparent that carrying the belt along with me only slowed me down. Therefore, I left the belt in the car and became adept at speed-climbing the poles with just my hands and the spurs. The risks we take for money.
It was toward the end of the job that I drove to a customer’s home. It was owned by an elderly woman who was sitting in her rocker watching me out her living room window. I walked to the pole in her front yard and began climbing without the belt. About ten feet up my left spur kicked out when I put weight on it. This in turn kicked out my right spur and down I went landing on my back in her yard.
Lying on the ground with the wind knocked out of me, I heard the front door open. The little lady with her walker came out onto the front porch and while shaking her finger at me yelled, “Don’t play on those poles!” She then re-entered her home. While watching the Bluebirds circling overhead, I could hear the spurs jingle-jangle-jingle.
After the audit was finished, I returned to Swede’s house with the climbing gear.
“How did your stint as a pole climber go?” he asked while sipping on his glass of Canadian Mist.
“I actually got quite good at climbing and felt comfortable going up and down the poles,” I answered. “I do hear a somewhat eerie sound coming from the spurs occasionally.”
“The jingle-jangle-jingle?” he asked. Let me tell you a story. When I was a spar tree setter, I was climbing an 80-foot fir that I had already limbed and cut the top out of. I was paying attention to the crew on the ground and not what I was doing as I climbed. Not realizing that I was at the top of the pole, I lifted my belt up and it flipped over the top of the pole. It snagged on a jagged part of the cut on the top.”
“I hung there staring at the belt which was barely snagged. The only thing holding me on the side of the tree were these spurs. Carefully, I climbed to the top of the tree and sat on top of the cut looking at the crew 80 feet below. Two spurs and part of a belt was all that kept me from falling to my death. I must have sat there for a half hour shaking. Yes, I owe my life to those spurs and every time I wore them after that, I would hear the jingle-jangle-jingle reminding me that they saved my life.”
Swede took the belt and spurs and hung them back on the nail at his back porch. I always thought it was an odd place to keep them, outside in the weather. But then it all made sense because in the breezes which blew throughout the year around the house, the spurs would swing back and forth hitting steel against steel. Sitting at his kitchen table with a glass of the Mist in his right hand and scratching the head of his mutt dog, “Digger Odell” with his left, Swede would be reminded of his days as a climber and hear the savers of his life calling, “jingle-jangle-jingle.”
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2 replies on “Spurs That Jingle, Jangle, Jingle”
Crazy, fun story! I didn’t know you worked as a pole climber. Sounds like quite a job. You’d have to be super brave to do that every day!
I so respect the ones that speed climb up to those trees. And to carry a chain saw to cut the limbs off is amazing. My dad did that in his younger years.