I grew up in Brockton and that's where a lot of my fascination about pole lines, insulators, street lights, etc., all began. I fondly recall this street scene since we were living nearby when I was 12. The street lights were of the mercury vapor type and among the first 100-watt variety that the utility used. The fixtures were made by the Wheeler Reflector Company (around 1955 or 56) with the lamp's ballast mounted separately on the pole. The latter were square (opposed to the more familiar round, cylindrical type); made by General Electric. These fixtures operated strings of several lights from a separate, dedicated "pilot" wire, activated by a Fisher-Pierce Company tube-powered photoelectric control. Brockton Edison did not install many of these lights, probably because they were rather costly. Of the ones I was graced to see, I really admired their greenish light! The fixtures in this photo employed open-bottom glass refractors which made it really "convenient" to look up at their cool light bulbs, especially during their warm-up stages which usually took several minutes to reach full brightness.

Brockton Edison also used a great many Line Material Company box-type fuse cutouts. In fact, there's one on the right upper corner and another on the pole in the center-left. I grew up with many of these and truly enjoyed looking at them as well! I started a collection of LM cutouts in my younger years and presently have a nice assortment and variety of the different types the utility used.