Poles are now standing at the top edge of my yard; appearing not too different from trees without limbs or leaves. One is braced by two boards, cement filling the hole around it.

The others, all formerly the property of either the electric company or the telephone company, are simply standing at attention, awaiting their final placement.

I hope to turn the poles into a good building soon, but since I'm working on it by hand without the aid of machinery or construction equipment, it's not an easy task. It is a project that probably should have been started a long time ago. I don't really have an excuse. Then again, I don't really need one.

What I really need is a building in which to consolidate my ‘treasures' from afar. I still have things stored in three towns and at least six storage buildings and trailers, so it is my sincere hope that I can get that down to no more than two places.

As usual, the hardest part is getting the poles set square to one another and the proper distance apart. I take that back. In this case, the hardest part is trying to stand up telephone poles by hand. Luckily, one of my friends who is able to lift heavy things was more than willing to lend his brawn to the task, which, combined with my own efforts, brought the project to this point.

My friend, who is known in some circles as "Hulk," was able to lift the poles with seeming ease. I, on the other hand, am known as "that guy who needs pain medication after trying to lift telephone poles."

Nonetheless, I was sometimes able to do about half of the lifting and other times more in his way than anything. I did add in some really great grunts, moans, and even a whimper or two for the soundtrack in case this production ever were shot as a feature film.

Anyway, the poles had been lying in a neat little pile at the top of my yard for months, awaiting a time of usefulness. I already had them cut to length and ready to go, but the money, time, weather and effort needed to make them anything other than a pile of poles wasn't present. In fact, only a few of those factors is present now, but I figured I better get started now or it would be winter again and I still wouldn't have a decent building raised.

One of my good friends donated them to my cause last year and two of my other good friends helped me haul them to the house.

Since the poles are more than a few pounds on the heavy side, we drug them into place with a chain one at a time and then used a saw horse to lift them up on until we could hand-over-hand them into the holes we had excavated.

Digging a three-foot deep hole isn't easy in these mountains, but digging one large enough to accommodate a telephone pole and a cement footer with hand tools is down-right daunting.

Since the holes likely will have to be moved around to square up the building, I'm looking forward to doing a little more of that fun digging later this week. At least I have something to which to look forward.

Two of the holes were in ground that was reasonably easy to dig. One was in hard ground with some rock, the other was over what appeared to be a chunk of the core of the earth. As the digging implements struck the rock, you could feel the ground vibrate several feet away. I took that as a sign that the rock was bigger than your average stepping stone.

After chipping away at the stone with my digging bar for about an hour, I starting wishing for a few half sticks of dynamite. Even without explosives, we managed to get the hole down far enough to do the job, but not quite as deep as the others. After all, I reasoned, if it's too hard to dig, it's likely hard enough to hold up a pole and probably better than anything I could pour out of cement.

The first two poles, both about 16 feet long and some 10 inches through the middle, went up without a hitch. Unless you count the one in my back as we raised them into the air.

Of course, I didn't worry about getting it done since my large non- green, but still very able, friend was there to help. Well, actually, he did most of the lifting. I did throw in my shoulder to the work, but I would never have been able to hoist such heavy weights without him behind me.

The most dangerous part of the job wasn't the heavy poles, as it turned out. As we were moving the third pole, he noticed something moving along the side of it. It was only inches from where the chain was threaded around the pole. As I walked over, he pointed to the glossy black body of a spider crawling up the pole. "Black widow," he said, turning somewhat pale. I didn't know that he was somewhat of an arachnaphobe. (That's a really big word for ‘scared of spiders,' in case you didn't know). It seems like everything has a proper term these days.

I moved in close for a better look and, sure enough, there was the tell-tale red hourglass shape on the arachnid's abdomen. It didn't seem very aggressive, just sort of slowly crawling up the side of the pole. As I was looking, he crushed it with a piece of wood. He told me it might have been going into 'defensive' mode, that's why it wasn't moving quickly. I was just glad it didn't decide I looked tasty. Since the thought of a poison spider gave me the willies, I definitely handled the remainder of the poles a little more carefully after that. I hadn't seen a widow spider since I killed one in my mailbox about 15 years ago. Even though I'm not typically bothered by ‘normal' non-poisonous spiders, I'd just as soon not see another one any time soon.

Get more tongue in cheek commentary this week's issue of the Alleghany News!

Email: allnews@ls.net