I suppose that one thing that discouraged me with Pole Line construction was the very nature of that Onaway job. When the extreme cold weather ended and it started to thaw out, everything turned to mud. I had most all of the poles set before the thaw started, but the anchors and guys still had to be installed and the wire strung, so there was a lot of traveling of the Right of Way to be done. The swamps were bad but, actually, the open fields presented the greatest difficulty to the movement of equipment.

The trees that the clearing crews had cut and trimmed, were piled along the sides of the R/W, so we could use them to help hold the tractors up, but in the open fields there was nothing but mud.

There was one occasion when every piece of equipment that I had was stuck in the mud. That included two crawler tractors, a Half-track Crane and two or three four wheel drive trucks.