I worked for years for an Alaska electric utility that was into a lot of rebuilding in the interior. In order to put up a new electric line you had to order your materials months in advance and barge them into the village in the summer. So naturally when the materials were all there they'd send the crew round to locate them and get the local work organized. I went all over Koyuk looking for me poles, found them being used as rollers while they moved the church to its new location. Since the poles were actually an engineered product, (bored, faced, creosoted), they weren't in the best of shape when it came time to use 'em, but them's the breaks.

(Then there's the time I was staking a line and the kids were pulling all the stakes out behind me and playing swords with 'em....)