My wife Jo and I returned to Alaska from our summer in the Klondike and northern British Columbia in late September. It dawned on me as we trailed along the Alcan Hiway, that soon the twelve wire telephone line paralleling the road would be gone. More line is knocked down each year as the Canadian and the American government contractors rebuild and pave the Alcan. (Today it is called the Alaska Hiway.)

So I drove along and waited until I spotted a telephone pole that had been hit by some heavy vehicle. It was broken off at its base. I pulled the Blazer and Kit over to the side of the well traveled road and went back to the pole. The two cross arms were suspended by the wires at a height just at my finger tips when I stood on tiptoe and stretched out full length. I hauled and crawled my way up until I was sitting astraddle the lower cross arm about eight feet above ground. 

Just after I released the first tie wire from my first insulator, a big 25 foot Winnebago pulled up at the side of the graveled road opposite my outfit. 

"Get one for us," the driver yelled from his seat. "I will," I responded, "if you will come and help me."

I had just lost my pliers. When the tie wire came loose, it released all the pressure on the one wire. The wire whipped up, throwing my pliers about 20 feet straight up into the air. 

The two men in the Winnebago got out and came over. They retrieved my pliers from where I had seen them fall into surrounding brush. 

I recovered three mint condition insulators and two near mints from the eleven left on the cross arms. 

The two men were insulator collectors who live in Pennsylvania. They were tickled pink to get the two clear Whitall Tatum NO 1 pieces as historical mementos of their trip to and from Alaska along the Alcan Hiway. 

Unfortunately, all three of us were so concerned about some authority driving up, that we didn't take time to introduce ourselves, but dashed back to our respective vehicles and took off. They were headed south for Haines and the Alaska Ferry system on their way home. Jo and I still had 125 miles to go before we reached the Alaska border on our way to Anchorage.