Surveying as a profession - a comedy of random events

When I quit high school in the late sixties my head was shoved up my back side probably just about as far as it would go. The one thing that eventually shaped my life after that was probably the one thing I despised the most; my father was a surveyor.

If I remember correctly I was given the opportunity to find gainful employment before Pops intervened. Not going to school meant paying rent to remain at the Cash homestead. Paying rent was actually a no-brainer for me due to Momma Cash's endless supply of good home-cooked food and laundry soap. All I needed to do was find something steady to do that paid to keep myself from enduring the wrath of my father and winding up on a survey crew. Which he threatened me with constantly.

And I was no stranger to the life; I was born into 'grunt' status. As a child I was born into slavery and required to spend my weekends either slamming hubs, rocking an old Chicago rod (I still have it) or digging holes incessantly in strange places looking for bottle caps that the dip needle seemed to like. I probably would have enjoyed sticking a needle in my eye more than surveying.

It was winter and there wasn't much out there for a young man to do. I needed full-time work to satisfy Pops' requirements and there just wasn't that much out there. My only option was the restaurant business, but that would require me to cut my hair which was unacceptable (see first sentence). Nothing panned out. So early one Monday morning, sometime in the middle of February, I was scourged, flogged and shackled to an eight pound sledge to begin my penance and pay for my crime of dropping out of school.

Something that had been drilled into my thick skull by Pops and every surveyor I had been around was that to be a successful grunt you had to do everything the 'hard way'. Possibly somewhere along the line this innocent practice may have been utilized to build character in young apprentices but it got out of hand. I was taught a lot of stupid practices that were just plain counter-productive. One I remember well was making our own lath. Lath was purchased at the lumber yard in large splinter laden bundles...with square ends. I believe the materials were once nailed to the studs of interior walls and then plastered by hand; a practice that fell from grace about the time I was born. I got really good at sharpening one end of each lath with a machete.

I was shocked to learn the lumber yard also sold lath for stakes that were pre-cut. I was even more shocked to discover a bundle of the sharpened stakes only cost $0.50 more than a bundle of the lousy square ones. When I foolishly inquired as to why we didn't buy the 'good stuff' I believe the reply was something along the lines of, "you'd like that wouldn't you?". I'm surprised K&E didn't make brass stigmata hooks for surveyors to wear under their khakis...

And so one day my new party chief explained we were going to be staking paving. I was familiar with this practice. It would entail me dragging a duffle bag full of hubs and stakes along with me as I ran from station to station chasing the dumb end of the chain and trying to keep up with the party chief. Each station meant the bag was a little lighter...which was false hope because when it was empty that just meant I needed to fill it up again.

I dropped the chain for my new party chief and started filling the duffle bag with wood. The party chief, Jack, looked at me and asked me what I was going to do with all the wood. He laughed and told me "we don't do that on my crew". I was floored. Instead of dragging 200 pounds of crappy wood along with me all I did was tail-chain as we set duplex nails (flagged by yours truly) on centerline. Tail chaining was easy when you didn't feel like a pack mule.

After we chained and set nails on centerline Jack and I sat on the tailgate of the truck and the instrument man drove from station to station. I would hand Jack two stakes (we called them flats) and he scrawled the station and offset on them with Kiel. I tossed two hubs out and we were on to the next. When we had all that finished Curtis (the instrument man) and I grabbed the rag tape and hammer and proceeded to drive the hubs and stakes at their proper distance from the centerline nails. Jack took that opportunity to scratch in a field book.

Without having to carry everything I felt like a bird that had been freed from a cage. I must have been smiling because Jack noticed and asked me, "you like that?" I noted it was a lot easier than what Pops had me do when I was with him. Jack enlightened me with the fact that "there's a lot we do out here different than what your father does...".

And so little by little I learned one could actually pay attention to the pressing matters of surveying (like proper and accurate chaining) without wearing a mill stone around one's neck. And while I'm sure that one thing didn't by any means change my dislike for surveying....it did allow me to look up and realize that in the field we could take things into our own hands and work as we saw fit. That was a breath of fresh air that helped me stick with it "a little longer"...