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Greece Trip 1997 Photos

When I was 16, I took a trip to Greece with my mother and grandparents. We were driving back from Corinth and naturally I was looking at the poles alongside the road. Suddenly, the line dipped and disappeared! The surrounding landscape turned black and I knew that a fire had taken down the lines. I insisted that we stop and my grandfather and I did a bit of hiking. Eureka! There was pole after pole down, free for the picking.

While my grandfather started removing the ones from the nearby pole, I followed the line down a ways to find any possible variations. I spotted a lone insulator lying in the dirt! It was embossed "TTT", unlike the "OTE" embossed insulators installed on the poles. I took a picture of it undisturbed, and then made it mine.

After taking our haul back to the hotel, I cleaned them up. Some were embossed "OTE" in a green underglaze, while others had a black underglaze.

Later in the trip we met my distant cousin. As fate would have it, SHE collected Greek insulators!! (Seriously, what are the odds?) She had some quite old ones from our ancestors' village in Platanos, and she was happy to trade one of my new ones for a small "pony style" that didn't have an underglaze embossing, but rather was incuse embossed.

Click on pictures to enlarge with captions.

Papou, my grandfather, helps me strip the insulators from a downed pole. Papou, my grandfather, helps me strip the insulators from a downed pole. Papou, my grandfather, helps me strip the insulators from a downed pole.
This pole had already been cut down, so these probably wouldn't have been there much longer. A lone insulator marked "T.T.T." as it lay originally. This was the only one I found with this marking. You can imagine my excitement as we drove by these lines!
As you see here, some of the poles had been recently cut after the fire. All of the insulators on the poles were marked OTE, pronounced "O-tay."
In our hotel room, I lined up my newest acquisitions before cleaning them... ...and after cleaning them! Notice the one marked "T.T.T." is shorter than the "OTE"s. Can you believe my Greek cousin collects insulators too?! An absolutely amazing coincidence. Russ Frank's 2004 display of Greek insulators