The weathered work boots of Art Baum and Kevin Fines crunched across tall, brittle weeds.
Ticks made no attempt to hide, crawling up legs and attaching to whatever they could.
To the east, acres of corn baked under the first-day-of-summer sun as temperatures soared into the 90s, and a relentless heat wave settled in.
To the west, a line of pines and oaks provided too-small hints of much-needed shade.
For most people, this was not an ideal day to work outside.
Baum and Fines, however, aren’t most people.
To them, this was just another day at the office. On this occasion, that looked like a narrow right-of-way running alongside a sliver of hot pavement in rural Fauquier County.
Baum, a grizzled Line Foreman with 36 years of industry experience, guided Fines, an Apprentice Lineman still learning the ropes, as Fines pulled a digger derrick truck into place.
They had come to replace a power pole that had multiple deep cracks and sizeable splinters.
“It’s better to be safe than sorry and change it out before it potentially falls and causes a power outage,” Baum said.
Over the next two hours, Baum and Fines — along with First Class Linemen Chad Frazier and Todd McCall — worked to switch out the aging pole with a taller, stronger and sturdier structure.
From 40 feet up in a bucket, McCall worked to safely detach electric wires from the older pole.
On the ground, Fines maneuvered an industrial-strength steel digger into place. He then guided the machine as it whirred and drilled through rock, dark clay and centuries old soil.
After several rounds of boring, it had carved out a six-foot hole right next to the damaged pole, and the team guided the new structure into place.
McCall then reattached the wires to the new pole, which if all goes well will stay in place for decades to come.
Last year alone, REC crews and contractors replaced more than 4,000 poles, each taking hours to complete. Providing reliable power can be a tedious, grueling process.
To Fines, it was all in a day’s work.
“Most people don’t see the work that happens behind the scenes,” Fines said. To him, that’s OK. The pride he takes in his work pushes him forward, even on challenging days.
“I want to provide a reliable power source so no one is left in the heat or the dark. I just want all our members to be as comfortable as possible.”
