The north wind, we call them the Santa Anas, was howling down the face of the San Bernardino Mountains and right up the back of my flimsy jacket that cold day in December 1948. 

Our Pacific Telephone & Telegraph line gang was wrecking an open wire line that had been built about 1905 by the long-gone Union Home Telephone Company, in the little berg known as Highland, California. 

After each of the four linemen "belted in" at the top of those rotten poles, we untied the sixteen equally rotten 083 gauge iron wires, gathered them in: a loose "rope" to be pitched in unison to the street below. We then began to remove the insulators which we dropped unceremoniously to the ground where they would late be dumped in the bottom of the hole created by the removal of the pole. We liked to play Bombardier by aiming each glass piece at the ones already on the ground. But bombing isn't much fun when you have to contend with 75 m.p.h. gusts of wind. Next we unbolted the cross arms, pitched them into the gutter and, keeping our backs to the wind, came down that pole in three steps. 

As none of the cropped glass was broken, I took a closer look at two brown ponies I had recognized as rather odd. Most glass being wrecked right after WW II were S.P. 's, Brookfields, Stars and Hemingrays in CD 113, CD 115 and CD 106, etc. I'd bet our crew alone buried thousands.

But what of those two brown ponies? Well, I just decided they were too unusual to pitch so they went home in my lunch bucket.

I was nineteen then and today I turned seventy, and yes, I'm still taking insulators home. About twenty-five hundred have acquired permanent status here along with more thousands of bits and pieces of telephoneana. Everything from square redwood poles, to manhole covers, books, pins, switchboards, directories, tools, telephones, old photos, local telephone company histories, etc. If it's telephone or telegraph related and I can carry it, I collect it. 

But you know, the best thing I've collected is memories. Recalling my days as a proud member of the "Ma Bell Family" and the endless list of collector friends going back fifty years...these are my Treasures.