A curious case of “Pole Dancing”

Note: This was, as is my practice more often than not, edited online. If you read this and said “WTF?” before seeing this note, then that could be one reason. If you read this post after seeing this note and still say “WTF?” well, that’s the way the eight feet go deep.

There are times when something — some thing — appears so quickly and unexpectedly as well as makes so very little sense that one is perhaps too awed to be scared. This explains what happened to me this morning although I do admit to some quick fright.

I was driving from Beaumont to Nederland down the “Three-In-One Highway,” well, it should be called that because it is all U.S. Hwys. 69, 96 and 287 wrapped into one. To make matters more confusing the road veers off to another highway, this one Texas 347 which goes to Nederland, the Port Neches-Groves area and Port Arthur. I decided not to take 347 though and as I was just about to follow the exit signs I noticed electric cables which both ran across the highway and were strung along poles off the roadway were whipping up and down very rapidly. The cross arm of one pole appeared as if it were about to smash the Impala I drive for work as well as pound me in the process. During this whole episode, which may have taken less than 10 seconds, I saw something the size of a baseball but which was unrecognizable flying toward the windshield. I also could hear the UFO bang the car.

Immediately I pulled over after I was clear of the once-dancing pole and figured this must have taken place during a freak windstorm. That was even though I noticed no great amount of wind as I exited the car to see if any damage was sustained. There was no damage luckily. I looked back at the pole and saw the top half of it leaning at what I estimated was about a 25-degree angle toward the highway.

I figured I should call someone and let them know a pole was leaning toward the roadway and that the entire bunch of wires looked as if they might have fallen on me had I not stomped the gas pedal. First I called the police. This was not the 9-1-1 line but the office number and that turned out to be a colossally-poor exercise in communication.

The lady at the police station told me there had just been a wreck where I was. An 18-wheeler had hit an electric pole and the traffic was shut down, the police department person said. Well, not quite. It wasn’t shut down where I was and in the lanes where the “Leaning Tower of Electric Shock” bowed its crown dangerously toward some driver headed toward his or her shifts at one of the many prisons or refineries located just to the south of where I sat. I couldn’t make the police person understand that the pole could come off onto a car or the highway and dragging any number of perhaps hot lines with it.

Luckily, I was after a couple of tries, able to make the person with whom I spoke at Entergy-Texas — the local power company — understand the situation. They said someone would check it out. Since their repair people were probably in the area already, or at least on their way, I figured that someone would do something at some time. I also figured out that the bizarre show I experienced had something to do with the wreck on the other side of the highway, but which I could not see for myself. Always with the weird things I see!

On my return trip, the highway was backed up just north of Nederland as well as a good five miles from where the big wreck happened and the highway was likewise closed down just before an exit for a Farm to Market road near a cluster of prisons.

It turns out the wreck and, I have to suppose, the dancing utility pole on my side of the highway happened when a big truck carrying a large portable office building wrecked and took out six electric poles. That was the explanation of the wreck given by local TV station KFDM. Entergy-Texas said on their Web site that 169 customers in the area were without power and that electric service might not be restored until 10 p.m. this evening. The highways had been reopened but were about to be closed once again on both sides of Cardinal Drive between Martin Luther King Parkway and Hwy. 347. This information courtesy of a Beaumont Police Department press release. If traveling, bring your patience with you or else a designated driver.

The mystery of the great Southeast Texas “Pole Dancing” Festival is solved. I feel much better. Especially so since I am no longer on the highway or underneath any electrical lines.