Hickman-Fulton
Counties RECC
Neighbors who Build Power Lines
March 1998
The power saw
sings through the studs of the half-finished house and into the
trees and surrounding western Kentucky fields. A crew from the
Hickman-Fulton Rural Electric Cooperative just hooked up power to
the site of a home that a Baptist minister is building for his
daughter in rural Hickman County. The builders can now go on with
their work, without having to use a portable generator.
The power seems a
godsend at the moment, but in a few hours it will become a
taken-for-granted necessity, like the air, or the ability to pick up
a hammer.
Making a routine
of the miracle of electricity characterizes the work of the
Hickman-Fulton co-op and its line crews. As the smallest electric
co-op in Kentucky, Hickman-Fulton has a unique and close
relationship with the 3,600 customers in four Kentucky counties and
one Tennessee county. It’s a relationship based on the competent
and neighborly way that the co-op keeps the electricity flowing.
“Everybody
pretty well knows everybody by their first name,” says
Hickman-Fulton Manager Glen Choate.
Hickman-Fulton
provides electricity to the rural parts of Kentucky that lie as far
west in the state as you can go, bounded on the north by the
Mississippi River and on the south by the Tennessee border (except
for the couple hundred Tennesseeans served by the co-op).
Of the 15 co-op
employees, eight work on the outside crews that hook up and maintain
the lines and poles. They’re headed by Harold “Dike” Nerren,
who has been at the co-op 30 years and, Choate says, “Never met a
stranger.”
Choate, who grew
up in Hickman and worked on the co-op line crew himself, has a
strong feeling for both the jobs of the line workers and for the
community. “In school I would look out the window at the linemen
working, but I never thought I’d get to be one,” he says.
Choate
acknowledges hard parts of his job--working with people who get
impatient when the power occasionally goes off, or people who can’t
pay their bills. “I sympathize with that,” he says. “They have
families, and I remember when I was starting out, earning $25 a
week, I had my lights cut off because I couldn’t pay my bill.”
But then he talks
about a thank-you letter from a family whose lights went out. Within
20 minutes a co-op truck arrived at their house, determined that
there was a problem with a transformer, and within 90 minutes the
electricity was back on.
“I read it to
the guys,” Choate says. “They really appreciated it and it made
me feel good.”-Paul Wesslund |
