TV Operator A Super Hero To Customers
Rod Davis doesn’t only go the extra mile for his customers. If need be, he’ll ski the extra seven.
Last Sunday, while most of his peer group parked on the sofa with pretzels and beer, Davis set off up a mountain through 2 feet of snow. Customers of his Burke antenna system had complained of lousy reception, and he wanted to keep them happy.
All 18 of them.
“Cable TV of Burke Canyon the name of the company is about as long as the town,” said Davis, who owns Active Electronics in Osburn as his “real” job.
That company has grown from a two-way radio retail sales store and service bench to become the owner of four mountaintop antenna sites. In addition, Davis frequently finds himself erecting towers on lonely mountaintops for companies like AT&T Wireless and US West NewVector.
Until last Sunday, he hadn’t risked his life for a while.
“My wife claims I needed a macho fix,” he said.
He got it. Before the Burke expedition was over, he’d taken a wrong turn, skied into a blizzard, and tumbled off a 15-foot cliff, all with 50 pounds of equipment strapped to his back.
But an hour before the Super Bowl started, he did locate the antenna. Brushing a heavy load of snow from the antenna miraculously improved Channel 6’s reception, a happy customer reported on Davis’ cellular phone.
Was it worth it?
“Oh, yeah,” said Davis. “I knew they’d all want to watch the Super Bowl. They wouldn’t have been able to see it if I hadn’t got it fixed.”
Not bad service from a guy who doesn’t even like football.
Out of green stuff
Finally - enough snow to stage some respectable Winter Games. But that particular festival seems to have vanished like snowflakes in summer.
“It’s a lot of fun, but we just can’t sponsor it this year. And it looks like no one else has taken it on,” said Kellogg Chamber Director Thresa Pouttu.
The Chamber of Commerce has spearheaded the festival for the past five years. It grew to involve hundreds of participants in events that spanned two solid weeks. But this year the chamber ran out of steam.
“We just can’t afford - in dollars or in manpower - to run it as it needs to be run,” Pouttu said.
She said the chamber still would like to sponsor one or two events.
“I think people will miss it,” she said. “Maybe next year someone will pick it up again.”
Join the fight against drugs
The public is invited to the general membership meeting of the Shoshone County Substance Abuse Council, to take place at the Sunnyside Firehouse in Kellogg on Feb. 19.
In a county with a depressed economy and a mind-boggling number of bars per capita, it’s vital to warn children of the dangers of substance abuse, contends board member Jack DeFeo. A former Osburn councilman, he said he’s heard hair-raising tales about the ready availability of drugs.
The council’s purpose is to raise money to buy learning tools for young people. It recently purchased a copy of a three-video series on substance abuse for every library in the Silver Valley.
But donations and membership are sorely needed.
“It’s all too easy to sit there with a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and moan about the problem,” DeFeo said.
He said the issue of substance abuse in Shoshone County hit home for him last summer, when a drunken driver killed a Mullan teen.
Shortly after that tragedy, DeFeo nearly was rammed at a bank drive-through by a driver zooming into a bar parking lot. Moments later, a boy on a bike rode past.
“If that kid had gone tooling past three seconds earlier, he could have been killed,” DeFeo said. “It just makes you think.”
, DataTimes MEMO: Bekka Rauve is a free-lance writer who lives in the Silver Valley. Panhandle Pieces appears every Saturday. The column is shared among several North Idaho writers.