My roots began in MI and I worked in North, SE and ended up in W central before I moved to AZ about 11 yrs ago. Moved back this fall to SE and have had the fun to see first hand some of the "handy work" I did back in those old days.
New roads that I staked. New buildings that I staked. (they were new then) Lots of new houses I wasn't around for. I even saw a hydrant that I hiccuped on long ago and got too high. Good old Mr Landscaper fixed that with a minor berm. Plus the trees are bigger everywhere.
Can't wait to spend some time in Grand Rapids for some other cool projects I did. Looking forward to go back in a few years and see some of my old stuff in AZ (knock on wood, eh).
Kinda puts a smile on for those wierdo types so inclined, even if it bores the heck out of friends when you point out that "...I surveyed and staked this road 25 yrs ago...". Kind of like when we slow down to check out some newish flagging, only to bore SWMBO whilst out on a nice country drive.
...just a mood 😛
We will have to do a mini beer legger in Northern Indiana one of these days.
> Kinda puts a smile on for those wierdo types so inclined, even if it bores the heck out of friends when you point out that "...I surveyed and staked this road 25 yrs ago...". Kind of like when we slow down to check out some newish flagging, only to bore SWMBO whilst out on a nice country drive.
>
> ...just a mood 😛
I think we all do it. I hope so anyway.
I've been on a job for a day or two before I remember actually working there, or close by, thirty years ago. I know I look like some old man having a spell, with all my startled whirling around.
What really makes me feel old is some of the projects I worked on in the late '60s have been torn down. In 1968 I remember staking the "new" WWTP here in Norman. It was dozed in 2002 and is now the Public Works maintenance yard.
It's almost time for the old folk's home...not quite, but close.:bored:
I feel your pain. Working primarily in areas with which I have been somewhat acquainted for most of my life leads to all sorts of opportunities for trips down memory lane in a variety of ways. There are job sites where I have worked on the same property three and four different times. A countless number rely on the same control monuments I have used once or a dozen times before. Yes, I remember the pasture that became a building lot that sprouted a house like this that was expanded like that and then had a pool come along even later leading to the third refinance.
But, better yet are those special times when a job takes me to a place where I can reminisce about something that happened there thirty, forty, fifty, maybe 55 or more years ago. Or doing a job for someone that had a great-great-grandfather or great-great-grandmother that I knew for some reason when I was just a child. Or having an excuse to go to the backside of a property that I have viewed only from the front side my entire life. Or doing a job for the soon-to-be-built bank on the site of the former liquor store that came along after the mechanic shop closed because the owner died of old age that was built on the site of the first hotel in the little town by the person for whom the town was named.....who has descendants that I know very well. As a local historian, those opportunities happen fairly often.
In the summer of 2013 I was called on to survey a tract on which a former nursing home was located. The southeast corner of that tract was the northwest corner of a tract purchased by my great-grandmother in about 1906 which was also the northwest corner of the smaller tract that was deeded by my great-grandmother to my grandfather in 1913 to be my grandparents' home. My mother was born in the house on that tract in 1919. My grandfather died in that house in 1951 and my grandmother died in that house in 1970. I recall watching the nursing home being built in the late 1960's and my grandmother's comment that she would never leave her home...and she didn't.
About 10 years ago I put in a bid to do a fairly significant survey as part of an airport improvement project, but lost out. I was really interested in doing it because the airstrip was located on land purchased by my great-grandparents in the early 1880's and was the primary home of my grandfather from then until he married. The homesite was leveled to construct the original landing strip prior to World War II.
