I'd never seen a telephone pole spitting huge showers of sparks without a work crew around it before. But that's what was going on outside Helen's apartment window today, during and immediately after a rainstorm made everything a little more conductive. She called Seattle City Light, who sent out the little truck with a searchlight to take a look at the pole from ground level. A couple hours later, I guess a cherry picker became available and a guy went up in the little basket to poke at things, hands and head warded against electric death.

When I was little, I thought cherry picker trucks were the coolest thing ever. I don't know if they're really called that, but I never learned another name for 'em. Those trucks with a giant robot arm with a big bucket on the end that a guy sits in while he works on overhead utility lines, or changes light bulbs in the top of the bus tunnel. Ostensibly, you can use them to assist in picking cherries. Maybe they're really called "Overhead Utility Line Pickers".

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