Linemen Rarely Retire Well. Just Ask Their Wives. They get cranky, irritable, restless and bored. Their wives want them out of the house. After all those years in the field, linemen do not domesticate easily.

Last summer, when I was covering the Hurricane Ike rebuild, I met so many linemen who had failed miserably at retirement and were back working full time. Case in point, I ran into Dave, who had just gotten out of the hospital for chest pains. However, he just couldn't stay away regardless of the entreaties from his family and friends. The siren song of storms was calling and he had to answer. I checked in with Dave a month later. He answered his cell phone from the hospital where they were checking his heart. He was a little worse for wear but not one bit repentant. He is one of those linemen who would rather die with his spikes on. I expect he'll get his wish.

Linemen can't seem to get line work out of their systems. They are not themselves when they aren't working. This line work becomes life itself and is not easily explained.

Have you ever had a project that so consumed you that you disappeared into your work? Maybe writing computer code? Maybe a design project you couldn't get separation from? I call it being in the zone, and linemen spend most of their time there.

I have noticed that if you take linemen out of their element they tend to go mute. Meetings and committees and teams and task forces are not their thing. But if you join a group of linemen for a field dinner in a mess tent after a day of repairing downed lines, they will bend your ear off with the stories they tell.

And you have probably noticed that line work is something that flows through the generations. Most any lineman you talk with will have relatives in the business. Harlan Electric general foreman Barry Shoemaker is definitely not one of a kind as line work runs in his family. One of his brothers is a lineman for Penelec. Another brother, unfortunately, died doing line work on an H-frame structure. Still another brother is retired from line work. But there are still more Shoemakers in line work. In fact, he works with his son Barry Jr., his nephew Ed and his brother-in-law Denny.

Barry Jr.'s comments are typical. When asked why he followed his dad into line work, the 18-year-old told me, “At first I wasn't sure I wanted to get into such hard work and decided I'd go to college. But then when I figured out the cost of college and found out I actually liked line work, I decided to do line work for a living.”

Of course, the lifestyle ingrains itself in the entire family. A stroll around the rodeo grounds in Kansas will find a lineman's wife and children watching him do what he does best. Ask a son what he wants to do, and more often than not he'll say, “I want to climb poles like Daddy.”

And I've found that linemen's wives are as independent as their husbands. They had to become tough to handle the pressures of running the household alone while their husbands are working late or are out of town on assignment.

Autumn Davis, the wife of lineman Danny Teague, put it this way: “So many linemen's wives live day in and day out without their loved ones. Everyone should respect what they do for us. My husband does not carry a weapon, pilot a ship or carry out government orders, but every day, he and his brothers risk their lives to ensure that we have the very basics of what we call life. Thank God, and then you better thank a lineman. They care for your family as well as mine. I am the very proud wife of a CenterPoint lineman.”

I was talking recently with a utility executive about the difficulty in recruiting potential line workers into the business. Although his utility will occasionally recruit an applicant who can take the hard work, the danger, the heat and the cold, he finds that most incoming line workers join with eyes wide open. They are joining a network of friends and family.