Phone linesmen, not power linesmen (he posted to be annoying!).

Bradbury may have drawn on some family history in creating some of his IT characters. In 1906, his Illinois-based grandfather got gold fever and began investing in mining companies and spending months at a time in the Nevada desert, hoping to strike it rich; he was briefly joined by his teenage son Leonard. Leonard--eventually Ray's father--later became a Power and Light company linesman. Five of the seven Globbed characters in It are linesmen and miners.