This took place on the Minnesota Iron Range in the 1950s. I wasn't there but heard it from guys who knew the participants.
Transit and tape survey on the centerline of a gravel road in the middle of nowhere, average daily traffic about 3 vehicles. Head chainman, about 300 yards from the gun, is trying to get line. Instrument man is looking through the gun but gives no signals. Head chainman waves the range pole and his arms, jumps up and down, yells but can't be heard. Finally, cursing, he walks back to the gun.
Turns out what the I-man was looking at was another 200 yards past the chainmen. A farmer's wife, wearing nothing whatever, taking a bath in the ditch. A nice day, a deserted road, a farmhouse that had no indoor plumbing, and a ditch full of fairly clean water, much easier to get at than filling a washtub with a hand pump. And of course the woman was one of many individuals on the Iron Range who didn't give a damn what anyone else might think.
On Saturday a 60 mph gust took my metal clipboard and flung it 30' across an A.C. road until it hit the cut bank then the two sheets of letter sized card stock note forms came free of the clipboard and I watched them float up 50 to 100' in the air. I thought I will never see those notes again but they came down and landed within 20' of the clipboard. One of the damnedest things I've ever seen.
The Dead Dog Survey
I was thinking along the same lines. You want to prove I buried my dog on someone else's property? You prove it. Don't tell me I need to spend $2-3,000 dollars to show a deputy where I buried my dog. It's biodegradable for cripes sake.
