How to Untangle South Philly Power Cables

Look up. Over your rowhome, strung between the pole and the next pole and somehow also back to the first pole, is a knot of power, cable, and phone lines that no living person has ever fully mapped. You are looking at the tangle. The tangle is looking back. Do not engage.

The correct move, and we cannot stress this enough, is to never touch them. Not with a broom, not with a ladder, not with a helpful cousin who 'did electric in the Navy.' The tangle has held for sixty years through hurricanes, block parties, and at least one guy trying to steal cable in 1997. It does not need your help.

Respect the tangle. Somewhere in there is a live wire. Somewhere in there is a wire that has not carried a signal since the Nixon administration. Nobody knows which is which, and the two men who did are no longer with us. Assume every wire is the live one and also the useless one at the same time. This is the only safe posture.

Respect, also, the birds, squirrels, and the neighborhood possum who live there. Generations of them. They have negotiated a peace with the tangle that you never will. They roost on the one line that sags the most, and they are, in every meaningful sense, the building superintendents now. If they look concerned, you should be terrified.

There is one wire that does nothing. It goes from a bracket on your wall, loops down almost to the streetlight, and terminates in a plastic cap on the neighbor's fence. It is connected to no service, no box, no house. It has been there forever. Leave it. It is load-bearing in a spiritual way, and the block would feel wrong without it.

So, to review the full untangling procedure: do not. Admire it from the sidewalk. Nod at it. If PECO shows up in a bucket truck, bring them a water ice and stand back a respectful distance. The tangle is not a problem to be solved. It is a neighbor, and around here, we do not touch the neighbor's stuff.