When the lights go out in Houston County, this lineman gets them back on

Electricity is something we as a society take advantage of.

It’s the ability to flip a switch and light a whole room, cook our food and dry our clothes. We don’t notice the great effort it takes to maintain until it shuts off.

Hunter Walton, a First Class Lineman for Flint Energies, is one of those people that keeps the system running.

“[It’s] getting the lights on, but it’s not just that,” Walton said of his duties. “That’s what most people see because that’s when they tend to realize we’re there is when the lights are off. You got maintenance, construction, we update old stuff to new, just keeping up with everything.”

It wasn’t a straight shot for the Crawford County native; like many people, he had no idea what he wanted to do after high school.

“I went to college for about a year. After my second semester I just realized that’s not what I wanted to do,” Walton said. “Then I talked to a few guys I knew that actually worked at Flint, realized that something I want to do is working outside, you get to do something different every day.”

He answered that call by enrolling at the Southeast Lineman Training Center in Trenton, Georgia. Walton said school is a popular option among those interested in the line of work, though it’s not the only one.

“You can go that route where you get a little bit of training ahead of time,” Walton said. “I went to school, which was about 15 weeks.”

“Or you could just get on with a contractor or we have some where co-op students can come in and they get the gist. [If] you come through a co-op you’re gonna have to go through an apprenticeship even if you went to school, it’s just part of their training because now you’re learning what the company wants you to do.”

Walton moved to Houston County in 2019 and is almost in his sixth year with Flint Energies.

A constant student of the trade, Walton suggests everyone interested come ready to work and ready to learn no matter how long you’ve been on the job or how much you think you know.

“You gotta want to come in and learn. I think a lot of guys come in and think everything’s just going to be handed to them or [they’ll be] babied along,” Walton said. “You gotta learn it. You gotta want to learn it because you can get into this lull of it, just barely skating by, and you’re never going to learn all of it or really bring yourself to the full potential.”

Those struggles can especially take hold during the long hours in the heat. Though Walton said the typical schedule is four 10-hour shifts a week, storm hours sometimes go until the work is done.

“Just like life, you’re gonna have hard times and you just got to keep going,” Walton said. “You get to that point where you’re like, ‘Man I’m tired,’ but you got to get to the finish line?You know once you’re done you just helped all these individuals get their stuff back on, get their life back together, everything’s straight. But also you know once you finish you get to go back to your family, and that’s the end goal anyway. Be safe and get to go home every day.”

Walton enjoys what he does, the good and the bad. But his favorite part isn’t specifically the work, it’s the camaraderie with his coworkers.

“We do a lineman’s rodeo. We get to take what we learn and what we do every day and they put it into a competition,” Walton said. “You climb, you get to do all the events whether you’re an apprentice or journeyman [in a] team with three guys. You get to hang out with all of the guys, the camaraderie is great, then when you add the rodeo into it you get all the competitiveness in us.”

There’s a lot that goes in to keeping our fragile society running. Next time you turn on your porch lights or plug your phone in to charge, thank a lineman.