It’s not exactly Lake Norman’s answer to the Eiffel Tower (two stacked ABB silos still would fall short of the Paris landmark’s peak), but Talkers have experienced the surprise of coming around a corner in a quiet neighborhood and suddenly seeing the sky-scraping cylinder rising incongruously beyond the trees, sort of like the beanpole kid hovering uneasily over his classmates in a sixth-grade class picture.

Huntersville’s tower of power isn’t getting any taller, but it’s about to get more visible. One Talker in particular noted the first signs of this trend recently. Now, there’s no way to be subtle about this, so we’ll just say that this Talker was male, and was standing at the toilet in his master bathroom, which gave him a clear view out a small window, into his back yard and wooded area beyond.

Through the trees, which autumn had begun to thin faster than the aging Talker’s graying hair, he caught a glimpse of a distant red light. While making sure to maintain proper aim in his immediate task, the Talker began to alter his sight line, trying to locate the light again. When he did, it’s source became clear. It was the warning beacon atop the ABB tower.

In a week or two, more than just the red light will be visible from that particular vantage point. In fact, the ABB tower will suddenly appear through leafless trees all over the area, likely prompting a few oblivious folks to ask, “Where’d that thing come from?”

Talkers note that those oblivious folks — regardless of what they’re doing when they see the (red) light — will have no reason to be ... well ... PO’d.