Smell The Roses

Old style utility pole

In my youth, poles of this style were commonplace. My friends and I may have known better, but we called them telephone poles, though they were technically utility poles for electric power or telegraph wire. Any telephone wire would have been attached to the pole well below the crosspiece containing glass insulators.

The last time I was walking in this area, railroad tracks were under my feet, snow was on the ground, and my wife, two children, and I were making our way from our house on 8th Street to First Baptist Church. We may have been on our way to sled the hills by the Church or those in nearby Happy Hollow.

Kudzu wrapped utility pole

Today, I was merely walking for the enjoyment of exercising. It’s amazing what one can see whenever he or she isn’t focused on a destination. That’s what I like about walking, now that I’m retired. I notice things

I live in a subdivision that prides itself in appearance. Even so, I’ve begun to notice a plastic bottle here,  an aluminum can there, and scraps of snack wrappers or containers in places I had not previously observed in simply driving by.

The photos shown here were taken along a section of the Tanglefoot Trail, formerly a railway and the one my little family used as a shortcut to downtown Pontotoc around 1980. The utility poles were no doubt there when we trekked the snowy rails, but I didn’t see or notice them.

Glass insulators, clear and blue-green

Today, vegetation has almost hidden them, and among the grays and browns of winter they stand as silent sentinels of a bygone era. They remind me of the importance of taking time to smell the roses, which is a paraphrase of a statement by golf great Walter Hagen, “You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry, don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way. ”