Power Line Mysteries and Musings

The alley behind our house, like alleys throughout the city, is lined with poles threaded with power lines that link ours to other alleys and garages and homes and businesses and eventually to the artfully clad energy transfer station on Hiawatha Avenue, which gathers electricity from wind farms in the prairies of southwestern Minnesota, a hydropower plant in Manitoba, the coal-fired Sherburne County Generating Station, the Prairie Island Nuclear Power plant, and assorted other sources, including a smattering of solar arrays here and there, then passes it along to keep our lights on and air conditioners humming, for which we are grateful.

At our previous house, directly above our garage was a large tin can attached to a power pole, with cables and coils connecting to other cables and coils. We spent more than a few balmy summer evenings lingering on the patio after dinner, speculating as to the contents and purpose of that cylinder. A Rube Goldberg device powered by squirrels? A nuclear reactor in miniature?

Then one day in July, the thing blew its top with a loud POP!, allowing a curlicue of smoke to escape, leaving it with a jaunty-looking topknot of twisted, blackened wires to complement its slightly rusted patina. A small crew from Xcel Energy quickly replaced it with a shiny new cylinder, which resumed the mysterious ways of its predecessor, silently powering our homes, or something—we experienced no loss of power during the brief interlude.

Our alleyways are not the only routes hosting powerlines in the city; they criss-cross streets and avenues here, there, and everywhere. I wondered about that, and discovered that the alleyway powerlines were supposed to be the only ones remaining overhead in the city. It was City Hall's earnest desire in the 1970s that all the rest be placed underground by the year 2000.

That explains why so many too-tall trees were planted under power lines on many of our streets, where they end up getting pruned into awkward Y shapes by the expedient folks at Xcel. Our city’s forestry department eventually realized that those lines are not going anywhere and now plant only small trees along affected boulevards.

But I can't say I'm all that disappointed the goal was not attained. The overhead network of power lines and poles, hosting coffee klatches of pigeons and solo performances by cardinal divos, characterizes our landscape in a very urban way, joining buildings to each other and to the sky, reminding us that we are all interconnected. Their intricate geometry has inspired a few local artists—I have a relief print by Duluth artist Monica Ihrke featuring powerlines leading down the hill to the iconic lift bridge.

And I can’t help but wonder if we would have nearly as many flowering crabapple trees lining our streets had those ambitious plans to bury the lines been realized. It’s another thing I’ll try to remember to be grateful for next May.