My favorite stories involve explaining ordinary things that we hardly think about (like, say, snow fences). For several years I’ve wanted to write one about telephone – sorry, utility poles. I finally got around to it last week, and it was published on Christmas Eve so it had a readership of about 17 people – but it was fun reporting. Plus, I got to mention both Godzilla and the North American Wood Pole Association, plus use the word “sheepishly” in the introduction, so it’s all good.
The most important piece of information about anything, of course, is its amount – so I’m happy to say that I got a pretty solid estimate of 500,000 utility poles in New Hampshire (meaning the ones that carry distribution power lines down your street, not big honkin’ transmission towers). That’s within the ballpark of the same pole-to-person ratio as North America, according to the aforementioned Pole Association.
You can read the story here – see if you can push the reader total to 18.