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Lassie and surveying
One of our few TV channels has old “Lassie” shows on Sunday morning. Today’s episode was from 1960. The County Engineer shows up at the Martin farm with court documents indicating the County will be working on a road along their farm. The existing fence is six feet into the right-of-way so the County is going to rip it out. Mr. Enders, the Martin’s neighbor, gets the same bad news. However, Mr. Enders has heard old, old stories of how some of the early settlers had moved the monuments set by the Government surveyors (PLSS work) to protect certain parts of their pre-empted property. So Paul Martin and Mr. Enders set out to find section corner monuments that do not agree with the reference monuments from the original survey. Meanwhile, discussion is held around the dinner table as to how to stall off the County workers to give them more “surveying” time. Somehow they had learned that the SPCA would get involved if a family of wild animals happened to live under the fence line the County needed to destroy. So Timmy and Lassie round up a family of possums and move them into a big den that conveniently was available and directly under the fence. The possums moved out of their new home by the time the County Engineer arrived on scene so he brings in a little bitty dozer and a chain and is prepared to yank out the fence. Meanwhile our erstwhile surveying heroes discover proof that some monuments had been moved. They arrive about the same time that Timmy has grabbed onto the fence and stood directly over the chain attached to the dozer to prevent the County Engineer from doing damage.
It was fun watching Paul and Mr. Enders reading from the Government notes and measuring from a blazed tree and a stump to a big pile of stones with a sharp stake in the middle of the pile. This was repeated until they finally found the erroneous monuments.
Here is a link to the details of the show.
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