Cole Hargrove, 58, retired lineman with 32 years of scaling utility poles through Ohio blizzards and thunderstorms, hasn’t pursued so much as a coffee date since his wife Linda died of ovarian cancer seven years prior. His only consistent flaw, per his grown son who’d moved to Austin last spring, is that he’s stubborn enough to punish himself for being alive long after everyone else has told him he’s allowed to stop. He spends most weeknights at The Rusty Spur, sipping $3 draft Pabst and yelling at the TV when the Reds blow a save, and weekends volunteering at the veteran’s food pantry downtown.
The small town’s annual summer street fair rolled around mid-July, the same week the city council voted 3-2 to let the public library host drag story hour for kids, turning the usually sleepy main drag into a mess of yelling protestors, harried event volunteers, and families ducking past the conflict to grab cotton candy and ride the rickety Ferris wheel. Cole had avoided the fair for three years running, but the pantry was running a fundraiser selling pulled pork sandwiches, so he’d showed up at 10 a.m. in his faded gray lineman flannel, a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2018 arc flash peeking out under the cuff.