The invisible telephone poles of Phoenix, Arizona


I took a photo of a telephone pole today. It's only a few blocks away from my house, and I'm sure that I've got passed it a million times. It's on a major street in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix, and like most telephone poles it's completely invisible, and as near as I can figure, has been invisible for many decades.

This neighborhood was built in the 1970s and '80s, and mostly the wires are hidden underground. But this one is right up there, just like telephone poles used to look. It does its function, and fades into the background, in spite of how big it is.

Actually, I don't even know if it's a telephone pole. It might be electrical wires, but I just call everything that looks like that a telephone pole. Like all wooden telephone poles, it used to be a tree at one time. If you get up close to it, you can see the knots. There's a street light on it, so obviously there's electricity going to it. If you know about these things, please clue me in!

It's funny how we don't see electrical lines, or telephone poles until we look at a photograph. As far as I can tell it happens to everyone, even people like me who are fascinated with tiny detail. The wires tend to look unsightly, and a lot of times people use Photoshop to erase them from photos. I've even seen old postcards with the wires erased (I guess they used airbrushes back in the day!).

This pole sits on the western edge of what was once the Sahuaro Ranch, which was a square mile. I really don't know how long it's been there, but the college has been there since the '60s, and there were homes, presumably with electricity around here long before that. I wonder if there's a date stamped on it somewhere? If you know, please tell me and I'll take a closer look.

As a kid, I always noticed stuff like this, and when I would ask the adults they would have no idea what I was talking about, or looking at. I guess these things are mostly invisible!
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