Yard Light

February 27,2017

“SUBJECT:  Light Removal”

“It has come to our attention that you have an outdoor light currently installed on an MVEA (Mountain View Electric Association) pole.  Lights other than those owned, installed and maintained by MVEA are not allowed on MVEA poles.  This light will be removed and left at the base of the pole.”

March 11, 2017

Dear Ms. Smith:

       Yes, I do have a light attached to an MVEA pole.  It, or its one predecessor, has been there for nearly 65 years, since MVEA first lit up our life in the 1950’s.  Unless I am mistaken, the light was mounted by an MVEA crew.  (I could be mistaken, as I would only have been 5 or 6 years old at the time.)

     The light was strategically placed to light up the yard, which at the time included a chicken house and a barn.  On the south end of the barn, just about ten or fifteen yards away from the meter pole that holds the light, we had a basketball goal.  The light provided enough illumination for many after-dark one-on-one, two-on-two basketball games or games of “Horse”.

     Of course, it provided the light to get to barn, chicken house, milk house, or shop on early winter mornings or nights.  It also provided a beacon for tired harvest crews headed home after a long day in the field.  It welcomed us home when we returned from school and athletic practices in the dark.  It provided a goal for visitors finding their way to our house after sundown.  In a scrapbook, a photograph shows my father changing the yard light bulb standing on a five-foot ladder perched on a huge snowdrift.

(March 13, 1977)

    Times have changed.  The barn and chicken house are gone.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the light’s nights are numbered.  Still, it seems that such a venerable institution deserves to have some type of “grandfathered” rights to continue to exist.  Perhaps it poses some type of danger of which I am unaware.    

       In reference to the offer you make in your note to me, I must decline.  It seems counterproductive in an age when we are trying to conserve electricity, and when much of our urban world is fighting a phenomenon known as “light pollution” that I would expend $12 a month to use electricity to add to light pollution.  One of the great things about rural living is being able to view the night sky, especially here on the plains where the sky extends 180 degrees from horizon to horizon.  I am not interested in any type of outdoor illuminating device that cannot be switched off or on.

     I am sure there is a very good reason for MVEA to make a rule prohibiting lights on MVEA poles, a reason of which I am currently unaware.  I am also sure that I will find other locations to place outdoor illumination, but for the immediate future, I will do without a yard light.  Since I won’t be using the yard light, my electricity use will be reduced by a small amount.  I guess that slight reduction in usage is in MVEA’s, and my, best interest.

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