I have always been taken by Glen Campbell’s song “The Wichita lineman is still on the line.” It is about a lonely telephone lineman in Wichita still at work and wishing for better things.

However, at this time of the year, with the snow blowing and temperatures dropping, I think mostly about those linemen who, in the middle of the night, are still “on the line” trying to restore electricity to those who have lost it.

We live close to the National Grid maintenance facility in North Harmony, and on bad weather days when I drive past that area — there are usually pickup trucks still in the parking lot no matter the time of day. “The National Grid lineman is still out on the line!”

When I have my grandchildren in the car, I tend to preach to them about various things…and one of those things is being thankful for those, like the linemen, who work in bad conditions so that the rest of us can have heat, fuel and sustenance.

They are unsung heroes, especially at this time of year.

There are others, of course, making life possible in the winter weather — snow-plow- drivers, police and ambulance drivers going to accident scenes, and school bus drivers getting kids to school on bad weather days.

But, to me, the lineman is in a category by himself. No sitting in a warm truck to do the job, not in an office watching the weather — but, right out there in the heart of the cold and wind removing a downed tree and re-stringing downed power lines. I shiver and get cold just thinking about it.

Yes, we know that they are well paid. But, so what — would you want to be out there where they are?

I am a bit of a weather “nut” which I think goes way back to my days on the farm when we needed good weather to dry hay in the fields. That interest was accentuated when I got my pilot’s license — flying into bad weather is not usually recommended.

A recent weekend was a good example of how weather affects our lives — about 200 million Americans were in the path of a big storm that left a swath of snow and ice from Texas to New England, and reports were that about 800,000 homes lost power during the storm.

Here, we received about a foot of snow on top of the 109 inches we have already received this winter.

As of this writing, most power outages from the storm have been restored…but, let’s not forget those who got the power back on. It was those “linemen who are still on the line!”

Rolland Kidder is a Stow resident.