I found this interesting piece a couple of weeks ago. The line it was on was wrecked out over ten years ago, with nearly all the poles and glass gone and/or picked over long ago. However, in this one mile stretch between roads, there were still three poles up, and all three happened to be in a slightly swampy area which is no doubt even swampier in the springtime (which is the time of year this line was removed; I know, as it ran past my parents' house, and that's how I gathered my first 20 or so insulators!). Many still on the poles had been shot at and hit, but some still appeared intact from the ground, so I set off to claim a few.

I carried the ladder in and began removing the 4 insulators that still appeared to be intact that were on this pole; a straw Diamond 154 and Gingerale Dominion 42 came down, the GNW 145 was broken after all, but this Hemi 40 was still tightly glued to the pin! Working with my arms above my head, I had no clue that there was anything on the dome before I finally got a good grip on the insulator with my strap wrench and finally got it loose. I nearly fell off the ladder when I saw TWO numbers on the dome!!, a large 7 with a small 5 embossed at 90 degree angles to one another. I remembered from previous ICON discussions that the numbers 4, 5, 7, and 8 do appear in large format on some of these, but I had never heard of one with two numbers on it! I wrote to our resident CD 152 guru Dave French, who says he has a couple too, but they aren't very common by the sound of it. I was certain for a few hours that I had a "one of a kind"... Another example of how even a $1 insulator can make your day!