At the Bloomingdale townwide garage sale last month I made a big score on my first stop — an old two-man crosscut saw. So the odds of a second score were the same as winning the lottery, without buying a ticket.

But my sailing partner, Kookie, insisted we keep driving down the River Road.

A short while later I saw the garage sale sign and turned onto a dirt road. About a half-mile later, after jolting off my favorite dental cap, we pulled up at the house.

The sale’s offerings were spread out on a few long tables, but nothing jumped out at me. Then Kookie called out.

“Hey, look at this,” she said.

I went over to her as she pointed at a pile of books. There were five or six of them, all the same title: “Fishing for Beginners” by David Campbell.

“I know Dave,” I said. “Haven’t seen him in years, but he’s a great guy,.”

“Maybe he lives here,” she said.

“Either that,” I said, “or the guy who lives here has yet to learn the first thing about the fine art of drowning worms.”

And then, as if on cue, who emerged from the house but himself, himself.

Dave and I shook hands and exchangd lies about good each other looked, and then played catch-up. He was now teaching English comp at NCCC, and you know what I’m doing (or more accurately, what I’m hardly doing). After that, we chatted a bit, me sneaking a glance now and then at the tables, in case I missed a deal. Unfortunately, all I came up with was blanks.

Kookie had also found nothing of interest, so we said our goodbyes to Dave and turned to leave. Suddenly, something caught my eye.

It was a wooden pole about 6 feet long, leaning against the garage. But it was a pole unlike any I’d ever seen. It had an octagonal shaft, with aluminum sleeves on each end, and out of one of the sleeves were three oddly arranged steel hooks.

“What’s that?” I asked Dave, pointing at the pole.

“It was for telephone linemen,” he said. “They used it to raise and lower the wires.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said.

“Check it out,” he said. “It has Bell Telephone stamped on one of the hooks.”

I picked it up, hefted it and looked at the hooks, and when I did I saw the price tag — $2.

Two bucks? A mere two simoleons for such a stellar piece of Old Time America? Who in his right mind could resist that?

While I don’t know if I’m in my right mind, I do know I forked over a pair of Washingtons and shlepped my score to the car faster than you could say Graham Bell.

And now a critical reader might ask two cogent questions: 1. What, exactly, would I do with the pole?

2. What prompted me to buy it in the first place?

The answer to Question 1 is simple: I’d hang it up somewhere in my house and gaze on it fondly from time to time.

The answer to Question 2, I’m afraid, might not be answered by a team of eminent Freudians working tirelessly till the cows came home. But I’ll do my best to shed some light on the matter.

Time travel at a glance

First, as a wee poppet I always loved old things, and I still do. When I do coin magic, I use only old all-silver coins. My nail file is 1920s vintage, with a bakelite handle — bakelite holding a special charm for me I can’t explain. My razor is double-edged Gillette from the mid ’50s.

Of course all those things serve a useful purpose. But how about the many other things I have, like my Model T wrench, my brass blanket pin, or my latest acquisition — my lineman’s pole? What useful purpose do they serve? The answer is, None. But they do serve a clear one: They are time machines. Maybe not in the HG Wells’ sense, but they give me entree into the past. The pole is a perfect example.

I’ll do more detailed research into its history later, but from a brief internet search I’ve already found some background information about it. It’s actually called a “hot stick” and was used to handle live wires. It’s also old — if not in a geologic sense, then certainly in telephonic one. From the ones I saw online, mine is certainly pre-World War II, and maybe as far back as the ’20s. Compared to new hot sticks, mine is positively Stone Age. And that’s where my time traveling begins.

Safety last

When I look at that pole, one thing becomes crystal clear to me – in contemporary terms, it’s dangerously unsafe. And that thought triggers all sorts of other thoughts about life in The Good Old Days. And they all point to one thing:

No matter how good the old days were, they were scads less safe than today.

Plus, the lack of safety — and safety awareness — wasn’t something that happened only with the phone company. Industry had almost no standards for hearing, vision, or breathing protection. Cars were death traps — beautifully styled, but death traps nonetheless. Seat belts were for pilots, baby seats (at least ones that actually protected the baby) were unheard of. As for playground equipment? If any school superintendent today installed the stuff I and my peers gleefully played on, he’d not only get fired, but tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail as well.

What about sports protection? A better question is What was sports protection? The answer is, Either ineffective or nonexistent. Don’t believe me, just look at a picture of a high school hockey game of the 1960s. Ditto for football equipment. Batter’s helmets? Ski helmets? Bike helmets? Life preservers? Quick release anythings? Fergit it.

On a positive note, schools held air raid drills, letting us know if we all crouched together in the halls, we’d be sure to survive an atomic blast or two.

A good example of the old time sense of safety is in a wood carving book of mine from the 1930s. I always wear eye protection and a Kevlar glove on my non-knife had, but even if they’d existed back then, I’m sure they would’ve been considered sissified and alarmist. In fact, the only reference in the book to safety was in the first chapter, where it said if you wanted to take up carving as a hobby, you’d best have a good supply of band-aids and iodine.

Out of the mouths of babes

Today we live in safer times. We also live with far more advanced, efficient, and effective medicine, technology and communication. Those are facts, and as such they’re not up for debate. But what IS up for debate is this: For all the progress we’ve made on so many fronts, are we happier and better adjusted than the folks in The Good Old Days?

I’ve no idea how you’d go about proving or disproving that, and my only “answer” was told to me by my nephew when he was six.

We were going somewhere in my car and I was listening to the news, with its usual smorgasbord of wars, famines, terrorism, and disasters of every ilk.

Thinking aloud and forgetting he was in the car, I said, “Weird world.”

He asked me what I’d said and I repeated it.

“Well, it’s the only one you’ve got,” he said, “so you better enjoy it.”

I had no reply to that, except to nod my head.

And now, 40 years later, that’s still my only reply.