If you had ever worked with me you would probably know all my old stories by heart.?ÿ They are all true recollections of some of the more notable times I've had during an otherwise typical career as a surveyor.?ÿ Lately I've been trying to collect all my stories and get them in one place.?ÿ I noticed there was one story I couldn't find.?ÿ
If you've ever lived in cheap hotels with a bunch of other surveyors you might know how chaotic things can get at times.?ÿ I don't know if I have ever posted this story before or not, but here it is.?ÿ Enjoy.
In the late '70s and early '80s I worked for a telecommunication engineering firm.?ÿ If you could talk on it, we surveyed it.?ÿ This was back when multi-media (cable TV) was in its infancy.?ÿ So cable companies started making millions of dollars stringing coax on other peoples utility poles. This was called "joint use" and the owners of the utility poles got to charge rent for hanging coax on their pole.?ÿ This made it very important to know whose pole was whose...and where was it??ÿ Enter a rare niche in utility surveying called "strand mapping".?ÿ And before anybody else could train a bonehead on what to look for and how to write it down...we were already there, got it done and we were gone.?ÿ The down side was the travel.?ÿ The upside was the per diem pay.
It became apparent that we couldn't have 12 guys on the ground with only one or two survey wagons.?ÿ We might have boots on the ground spread out over an 80 sq. mile area any given day.?ÿ So the company paid mileage for hands using their personal vehicles.?ÿ We were cashing BIG checks with all the overtime, per diem AND mileage.?ÿ Life was good.
But you know how cheap surveyors can be.?ÿ I will admit to sleeping in the back of a station wagon a few nights to save hotel expenses...but a hot shower and an indoor toilet is really desirable sometimes.?ÿ So we kind of settled into a "thrifty" form of renting cheap hotel rooms.?ÿ One or two guys would rent a room, preferably around the corner from the office.?ÿ After hours we would one by one sneak in with our sleeping bags (a.k.a. fart sacks) and crash on the floor.?ÿ I've seen a two bed hotel room with as many as 14 people strewn about.?ÿ If we all kicked in few bucks it made a hot shower pretty reasonable.?ÿ As you can imagine, the hotel owners didn't cotton much to the practice.
We called crashing a motel room "puttin' on a red hat".?ÿ This stemmed from a situation once (I wasn't there) where the night desk clerk was keeping a close eye on the room and the guy that had rented the room wore a red ball cap.?ÿ He would toss the cap out the bathroom window to the back of the building.?ÿ Another guy would put it on and walk in the front door of the room with the red cap on his head.?ÿ It supposedly worked, hence "puttin' on a red hat".
Anyway, breakfast was the one meal we would all eat at a restaurant.?ÿ To save our per diem, lunch was usually Vienna sausages or bologna.?ÿ And dinner was whatever-you-could-find.?ÿ I was partial to what I called the "Irish 7 course meal" that consisted of a bag of corn chips and a six pack.?ÿ But even that got old after a while.?ÿ One inventive hand brought along an electric wok.?ÿ I don't know where he got it, but it also had an ill-fitting kettle lid...of avocado green.?ÿ Hey, it was the '70s after all.
It took a while for him to perfect his recipes, but most of them were edible.?ÿ My favorite was what we called "wok-a-roni".?ÿ It consisted of one pound of hamburger and two packages of Rice-a-roni.?ÿ It was usually ready in 15 minutes.?ÿ If six guys pitched in 4 bucks apiece we could pay for a room and get a meal with a hot shower.?ÿ We were Kings of the road.?ÿ
But that electric wok had its flaw.?ÿ The cord was only about 2' long.?ÿ And to top it all off most cheap hotel rooms back then only had one electrical outlet.?ÿ It was on the light fixture in the bathroom above the sink.?ÿ To overcome the adversity he would usually cook on the back of the toilet with a rolled up sleeping bag, a Monroe, LA phone book and however many Gideon Bibles were in the room.?ÿ It worked...usually.
I don't know what happened, I was sitting on the bed.?ÿ But suddenly there was a crash, a loud pop, and all the lights went off.?ÿ Then the room filled up with smoke and the fire alarm sounded throughout the motel.?ÿ It was mayhem.?ÿ I was able to get one boot back on, grab my fart sack and head for the door...along with six or seven other guys.?ÿ We were met at the doorway by a furious motel owner...with a thick Farsi accent.?ÿ He wanted to call the cops.?ÿ He wanted to sue us all.?ÿ He acted like we had just slain his mother with a garden hoe.?ÿ He wanted REVENGE.?ÿ I made it out to the parking lot and headed around the corner to my truck.
Come to find out the wok had toppled.?ÿ It also brought down the light fixture over the sink and blew all the breakers in 8 rooms..not to mention setting off a fire alarm that sounded like WW 3 was upon us.?ÿ And to top it all off, the owner burned his hand really bad when he picked up the wok and tried to throw it at whomever was still in the room.?ÿ A couple of us watched the police arrive from the Waffle House parking lot across the street.?ÿ The fella that had originally rented the room and a couple of other guys were stuck trying to explain to the cops what had happened.
We thought we were pretty incognito until one of the patrol cars drove over to the Waffle House.?ÿ He wanted to know "how many of you all are there?"?ÿ ?ÿWe fessed up and our head count was seven or eight.?ÿ The officer (who thought it was kind of humorous) explained if we all kicked in 20 bucks the motel owner might be swayed to let things be.?ÿ We did.?ÿ We all went back over to the motel and ponied up our hard-earned-pay.?ÿ Some of the guys tried spending the night in a 24-hour Piggly Wiggly parking lot but they got ran off.?ÿ ?ÿI found a relatively quiet truck stop on I-20 and napped until the sun came up.?ÿ Never did my shower that night.
And the guy that owned the wok left it there.?ÿ I think the owner of the motel donated the wok to the dumpster in back.?ÿ What a shame.
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Would there be any chance of obtaining an ??un-edited? copy of this wonderful memoir. I can only imagine what was printed in ??True Police Stories? magazine. Great Account of times gone past, brought back forgotten misery!?ÿ
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@flga
A unedited hotel story would be the one about when I had three crews in a hotel in Durant, OK. Most of the guys had gone south to Sherman, TX that evening for real beer, boot scootin' and ladies. I stayed at the hotel like a good boy.
Around midnight most of the guys came home to roost. One of them had a young lady in tow. Her husband had followed them back with a pack of his friends. It was goat-ropers vs surveyors in the parking lot of a Motel 6. Tom Bodett would have been ashamed. After the police arrived and the feathers settled we were asked to leave immediately. Finding 4 rooms for a bunch of drunk surveyors at 1 AM in Durant, OK took a while.
...but that's another story all its own. 😉
I would bet money that wasn't the first, or last, time the hubby had to track down his wife.
Once upon a time (1975) in a SMALL motel far far away there were crews for two survey companies sharing the facilities.?ÿ ?ÿThe other company had hired some local help to cut line.?ÿ We got to talking, as surveyors have been know to do, and started a rumor about a local "lady" whose husband was a cross country truck driver and desired some male company in the evenings.?ÿ One of the fellows got really interested in meeting "Ruby" for some companionship himself.
At the time I had LONG blond hair and had been mistaken for female from the rear more than once.?ÿ The crew chief from the other company arranged for the fellow to meet up with "Ruby" out in the middle of nowhere for a little time together.?ÿ One of the fellows had me sit in his passenger seat and wait for the fellow to show up.?ÿ ?ÿFrom the back I looked believable (you couldn't see my beard).
When the fellow pulled up and got out of his truck out crew chief stepped out of the woods and let go a couple of rounds into the air from his shotgun yelling, "Damn it Ruby.?ÿ I told you if I ever caught you cheating again I'd kill that fellow".?ÿ The fellow left there into the woods on foot and we didn't see him until the next day.?ÿ He was bruised and brier scratched from one end to the other.
As far as I know he still doesn't know about the REAL Ruby.
Yeah, I know it was mean, but when you're 22 years old, out of town for days on end, and have NO other entertainment we did some strange things.
Andy
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