Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Sat, 1 Jun 91 02:45:55 EDT From: gaarder@anarres.ithaca.ny.us Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Looking for Inexpensive Outside Wire Message-ID: Organization: TELECOM Digest Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 416, Message 4 of 8 Lines: 47 The following piece, which showed up in soc.culture.new-zealand, suggests one possible approach to my quest for a cheap way to run wire to a friend's house: > From: anorris@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Andrew Norris) > With respect to the tails about uses of no8, there was an real good > chapter in a Crump Book in which a character named 'Scratcher' had the > job of maintaining a 8 mile length of telephone line through the bush. > The PO provided him with copper wire, which he used to sew his boots and > cloths up with. The line was repaired with any junk he could lay his > hands on, including sardine cans and dog chain. But he knew what he was > doing as he confided in the central character, Bruce (?); > 'It can't be any old thing though, it has to be metal' BTW, I'm also looking for entrance blocks (lightning protectors) or sources for same. [ Pat, concerning your suggestion of going underground: A reasonable thing to suggest, since you live in the Midwest where the soil is soft and sandy. Here it's heavy clay, and, since it's through the woods, full of roots as well.] Steve Gaarder gaarder@theory.tc.cornell.edu gaarder@anarres.ithaca.ny.us [Moderator's Note: When I look at old photographs of Chicago, say from the 1900-1920 era, all I see in the sky are telephone poles and wires running everywhere. The wires criss-cross in all directions running up and down the streets, etc. And now, telephone poles, while not rare, are far less common here. In the downtown area you don't see one for blocks at a time. In the residential areas, we have poles in the alley behind the houses in many areas, but very few on the main streets. They have buried almost everything. Of course, there are offsets to this: For the past two weeks, Bell Avenue (the north/south street at the corner from where I live) has been torn up for several blocks, all the way from Roseland Cemetery north to Warren Park. Everyone is in on the act: I see trucks from People's Gas, IBT, and the Water and Sewer Works all out there every day, digging, laying new conduits, sewers, etc. They wake me at 6 AM when they start tearing up the street. PAT]