One of the great things about this site is the opportunity to learn more about each other beyond simply survey skills. We all have intersting backgrounds and general experiences in life. I am hoping that many here will join this thread and add something connected with their old home town (or apartment complex). Some surely can count several locales as tied to them.
Going first: This fellow was in high school with my oldest daughter and his mother was my English teacher both Freshman and Sophomore years of high school.
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/officials/BlubJo0r.htm
For baseball fans we have these two from the same home town nearby.
My home town remembers George Saling who won a gold medal in track hurdles at the 1932 Olympics. He died in a car crash a few months later. The school athletic field is named for him and also a race at the annual town celebration.
George worked for the county surveyor briefly, probably summers during college. I think this was making ties to the section corners in preparation for regrading rural roads as automobiles were displacing most of the horse-drawn buggies.
Another worker later recalled how he climbed fences but George just jumped over them.
That guy made a curious remark about their job being "digging up the old stones and putting them where they were supposed to be." I hope they were just lowering them and not straightening the section lines.
That town celebration has been held every year since an 1883 gathering of the "Old Settlers" of the county, except for a year during covid and I think one during the "Spanish Flu". I felt a shift in the Force when they moved it from the second Saturday in August to the third after almost 140 years of tradition. I've attended every one during my life.
Another non-athletic and non-surveying trivial fact: At one time that county produced more timothy seed than any other in the country. Timothy hay was highly regarded for feeding horses, and is still used for cattle.
Another nearby tie to fame:
My childhood home was directly across the street from the house where Miss USA 1968 lived. I lived in the house with the green roof in small town Kansas.
T. Nelson - SAM
You must be much younger than her. Did you ever meet her.
I am much younger than her. I did not meet her personally but I believe my mother did.
T. Nelson - SAM
We did business with her father, Dwight Barnes, at Barnes and Weast John Deere on Cedar Street. Her younger sister, Barbara, was closer to my age and we played together sometimes if she was at the dealership when we came in. Here she comes, Miss America! I well remember the sign hanging over the south entrance into her hometown declaring, "Hometown of Miss America 1968".
Osa Leighty Johnson--Woman of the Jungle