One cannot stress enough just how serious some folks are about their boundaries. I've said more than once it is not merely possessive, it can be primal.
Be forewarned and brush up more on your conversational skills than your math skills.....
Once upon a time I had the pleasure of attending one of Walt Robillard's classes. He spent at least half of the class time going over newspaper clips of "Land owner dispute turns deadly." We all candidly told similar stories of "Close calls" and in spending this time it became clear that his point was to stress how important each boundary may be to those affected by our actions or lack of actions. When someone asked him a specific boundary question, his response was. "well I seem to have put most all those answers in a few books I helped with a few years ago." His purpose that day was to reaffirm to us all in attendance that boundaries are precious, property is cherished and to stay safe out there.
paden cash, post: 429624, member: 20 wrote: One cannot stress enough just how serious some folks are about their boundaries. I've said more than once it is not merely possessive, it can be primal.
Be forewarned and brush up more on your conversational skills than your math skills.....
I think there's probably more to that story than just some innate territorial instict at work. It sounds as much like armed senile dementia as anything. In my experience, anyone engaged in land surveying can expect, sooner or later, to come into contact with individuals whose once-tight wrappings have slackened and for whom the technical issues of property ownership and property boundaries are a metaphor of existential importantance to them. It's as if land boundaries are all that tethers them to anything resembling sane existence.
I consider the civil engineer who was really quite bothered that I was surveying some control points in the middle of a public street in front of his house to fit that bill. He was a total nutcase who was passing for semi-normal. Then there is the older woman who paid me to place concrete markers along the lines of her lot at fairly frequent intervals. Why? After I'd handed over the invoice and received a check, she let me know that her neighbor was a highly suspicious individual that she would refer to Mssrs. Smith et Wesson if he ever stepped over the line I'd just marked. I didn't see that one coming and you can't make this stuff up.
Kent McMillan, post: 429704, member: 3 wrote: I think there's probably more to that story than just some innate territorial instict at work. It sounds as much like armed senile dementia as anything..
I believe therein lies the astonishment in my opinion. It would be easy to believe that extremely violent territorial behavior could be blamed on senility or dementia, but I'm not so sure that theory fits a lot of the encounters I've read about. A lot of these "deadly boundary encounters" have been normal and generally rational people (whatever that means in this day and age) that wind up blowing their neighbor's brains out.
I'm sure if I ever pop a round or two into my neighbor over a fence dispute I will most assuredly claim some sort of senile dementia for the basic insanity plea. I'm just not convinced that violent behavior is a sign of insanity. I believe some people just get pushed to "the edge" when they feel their borders are being encroached upon. A scary thought, but it evidently occurs.
paden cash, post: 429705, member: 20 wrote: I believe therein lies the astonishment in my opinion. It would be easy to believe that extremely violent territorial behavior could be blamed on senility or dementia, but I'm not so sure that theory fits a lot of the encounters I've read about. A lot of these "deadly boundary encounters" have been normal and generally rational people (whatever that means in this day and age) that wind up blowing their neighbor's brains out.
I'm sure if I ever pop a round or two into my neighbor over a fence dispute I will most assuredly claim some sort of senile dementia for the basic insanity plea. I'm just not convinced that violent behavior is a sign of insanity. I believe some people just get pushed to "the edge" when they feel their borders are being encroached upon. A scary thought, but it evidently occurs.
Well, I consider an obsession with land boundaries by non-surveyors to be prima facie evidence of some abnormal condition that seems to visit the elderly most frequently. This view is based more upon experience and observation than anything else. Land boundaries become a sort of proxy for the possessor's tenuous grip on the world.
When you run across someone in his or her 30s or 40s who is in the grip of this obsession, there is invariably more at work than just the technical issues.
One of my more interesting and possibly most difficult clients was a fellow in his 80s who was engaged in a protracted boundary dispute with an adjoining landowner. It was in fact a tough problem that I finally solved to my satisfaction, but the solution ran contrary to the ideas that had taken hold in the client's mind. It left me obliged to write a very long report explaining in great detail the basis upon which I had concluded that a particular line had been run in 1835 in a position 100 varas North of where he had assumed that it was, and where exactly a line had been run in 1846 that was the real matter in dispute.
I find it's usually not the property line that is in dispute, it's always something that happened twenty or thirty years ago:
"Your daughter insulted my daughter.", "Your son picked on my son.", "Your visitors trampled my roses."
And all that was forgiven and forgotten long ago, but lingers in the mind of the possessive one.
I did a survey at the end of a cul-de-sac and was warned ahead of time about the crabby neighbor and the ongoing feud.
These two families had been at each others throats for twenty-five years. When I asked what caused the riff, nobody remembered.
As crazy as everyone is in Florida, I'm suprised it doesn't occur on a daily basis here. Cripes if you even glare at some idiot driver on the Interstate you are likely to get shot.
Most wars are boundary disputes.
Hack, post: 429716, member: 708 wrote: Most wars are boundary disputes.
No not really. Not really about ideology too but borders and beliefs have s contributing effect.
Wars are about money or economics.
I get kinda upset when the client forgets to mention the survey is for a boundary dispute, and the irate neighbor shows up, way too often with a shotgun in hand.
I try to ask why the survey is needed and if there are any boundary disputes.
Steve Gilbert, post: 429749, member: 111 wrote: I try to ask why the survey is needed and if there are any boundary disputes.
The disputes don't make it to fruition until your survey is complete. Up until that time there are merely suspicions and opinions. 😉
FL/GA PLS., post: 429713, member: 379 wrote: As crazy as everyone is in Florida, I'm suprised it doesn't occur on a daily basis here. Cripes if you even glare at some idiot driver on the Interstate you are likely to get shot.
It's because of all the immigrants from cooler climes.
paden cash, post: 429751, member: 20 wrote: The disputes don't make it to fruition until your survey is complete.
Yup, that's when the excrement hits the turbine. 😉
It's never about the line; the line is a dynamic object and with the right attorney, you can push it where ever you want. Usually, making your neighbor suffer. Either with money or the deep humiliation of being a loser...
At a continuing education meeting in Jefferson, Texas, once the 4 Super Chiefs as they referred to themselves listed the top 4 causes for murder in Texas historically, Money, Women, Land and Dogs. I can't remember the order.
