When I first started surveying...

My first day for a summer job of surveying I was handed the 100' chain that was "rolled" up and told to "throw" the chain. I undid the leather straps and I asked 'you just want me to throw this'? The response was from another chainman that I just needed to throw the chain so I did. Since he told me to throw the chain the party chief made it his job to untangle it.

I became very proficient at doing up the chain and getting it out that first summer and am glad I had that experience and understanding of the "old" survey ways that others entering this profession don't normally get today.

May 1985, Age 18

Although I had been 'helping' my father since I was nine or ten years old, I didn't really 'have a job' in the surveying world until fall of 1969 when I quit HS. I wound up as gopher on one of the crews. Some of you all might be able to relate to the negative status factor that applies to relatives of the boss..especially young relatives.

As I rode home with my father one evening he told me to make sure I packed a lunch for the next day. He had scheduled the crew I was on for a job that was "way out by the lake"...no Burger Queens or screen-door stores to eat lunch. I did as I was told the next morning and packed me a bloney sammich and some goodies.

Around noon the party chief announced 'lunch break'. He had seen my brown bag and told me there was plenty of shade I could sit down and enjoy my lunch. I did.

Then I heard the truck start and take off down the road. There they went....I ate my lunch. I threw rocks in the creek. I climbed under the timber bridge just to look and see what was there. I didn't have a watch. It seemed like hours had passed.

Just about the time I thought I was going to have to walk back to town I hear the truck pull up. The PC and the gunner were gigglin' and shaking ice into their faces outa Pizza Hut cups. They wanted to know if I had 'enjoyed my lunch'...

About a week later Jack, the PC, said that nobody ever asked him about his lunch break. He wondered if I had told anybody (i.e., my father..the boss). I told him 'nope'. I believe that earned me a spot on Jack's crew. He was a little nicer after that.

I don't remember much about those first few days, EXCEPT that everything was upside down and backwards (Kern DKM-1), and the tripod had 4 legs!

September 1968, age 18
Loyal

Okay, you guys opened this can...

First week in career...We had just finished staking this long curved section of curb in this new subdivision the afternoon before (I was in charge of pounding in the "guard" stakes next to the actual hub and tack) and first thing the next morning we needed to run levels. It was just the PC and me sinbce the IM was sick that day. He setup the level on this hill next to the truck and proceeded to explain to me how the level and rod worked...

So, here I was happily walking along the line of stakes holding the rod plumb, rocking it when it asked for it, when he asked for a "turn" over the radio. I asked "What's a turn?" (He was an impatient man) He told me that "I needed to give him a shot on something solid so that he could move the level since the remainder of the stakes were further downslope...like the top of the guard stake there" (to this day, I have no idea why he didn't just use the last shot on the hub as the turn). So I gave him a shot on the guard stake and he proceeded to break down the level to move.

While he did that...the guard stake fell over. Me, being all proud that I have finally learned to carry the hammer with me everywhere I went, quickly proceeded to pound the guard stake back in. For some reason he caught this out of the corner of his eye and came over the radio with "Did that stake fall over?" "yeah it did", I replied proudly "but I took care of it and it is solid now".

After 15 minutes of yelling, cussing, slamming the truck door, opening it back up and slamming it again, he calmed down and explained to me why that was not good.

September 1980 Denver, Age 17

In 1961, on the Miami Airport interchange, with long curves, I actually though they would chain from the PC to the radius point, then all the way back to get to a station on the curve.

First day on the job and I was told to let down the chain. I forgot to realize my party chief was left handed. And we all know how this turned out.

1972 - 18 yo

Looking back over my career my first day surveying is still the most vivid. I was 3 months out of High School, city boy (Portland, OR), never been away from home, hired by BLM and shipped a few hundred miles south to Cave Junction, OR.
We pile out of the truck and the boss looks at me and said "you're not going to wear that *&%#$ing jacket all day are you, it's going to be 100° by noon". Guess not sir.
Then I'm handed a brand new brush hook and thinking to myself how fortunate to get a brand new piece of equipment when most everyone else had an old one. Until I realized how many weeks of sharpening it took to get it to where I could actually cut something.
Then I'm handed a hard hat which I promptly put on only to her the boss say "you oughtta see how %#$*&(!ing funny you look with all that hair sticking out from under that thing". He didn't much care for long hairs.
Then we proceeded into the brush for about 10 hours and at the end of the day my only thought was "MOMMY".
But after a couple of weeks and a couple of BLM nights (some of you may know what that means), learning how to drink beer and hearing every curse word and combination thereof ever uttered I was hooked.

May 1972-My first week on the job, and I didn't know anything. Party chief, I-man, and me, the new guy. PC says, "hold this (plumb bob) here, put your finger through here (slot in zero end of 200' tape), and make sure the plumb bob is over that nail under the gun (Old Gurley transit on stiff legged tripod). PC goes out about 198', calls back to me "Ready?". I'm thinking, "ready for what?". I say yes and he pulls, hard! Pulled me right in to the tripod, which proceeded to go over. I-man caught the gun about 6" off the ground. I don't know what it was about that day and that summer, but I haven't looked back since! Best dang career I can think of!

Thankfully, I worked for a guy more like Daryl M. and less like someone with this kind of attitude...

"No. College trainees do not take you to places you need to be.
We do not need to ride their coattails.
Their least squares solutions are meaningless to land surveying.
They need to learn, not teach."

A.J. I hear ya but keep in mind a teachers job is not always to be liked or be best friends with the student, different kids need different kinds of teaching in order to actually learn.

I have learned plenty from the hard asses and the nice guys alike, we all need wake up calls from time to time and I have survived a few metaphorical "boots to the arse" that upon reflection was really good for me and I needed it.

I think learning goes both ways, just like respect, however showing a little extra respect to a learned senior elder collegue is not just gracious but is the right thing to do, it is something I always do and sometimes with surveyors it means looking over the fact that they are gruff opinionated stubborn ole SOBs.... just let the bad go and keep the good is my policy.

We always had at least two extra guys on the crew to keep a sharp eye out for dinosaurs.

Plumb bobs were those new-fangled, high tech thingies that only papyrus scribblers used.

North was wherever the boss said it was.

Monuments were what you found at a corner, not something you took with you.

Pythagoras was still a twinkle in his father's eye.

The Earth was flat.

Summer 1958 @ age 14.5 within first week of being with my uncle, I showed great depth of instrument handling knowledge by leaning it up against a wall instead of setting it up on its three legs.

My knowledge accelerated very suddenly in a steep learning curve, aided by overly delivered epithets !

Being related, I was excused from being a son of a canine ............ that time !

Never done it since.

(No Kent, I've learned more than a bit, including to not lean against the instrument too !)

YOS

TNAI

I was 3, it is my earliest memory of our house my dad was building, I remember climbing the stairs to the house while under construction. My dad was outside working with the instrument.

I've been 'stuck' in this profession ever since.

March 1972. I had had a couple of classes in surveying and figured I knew a little anyway. WRONG. For the first two months all I did was cut line and occasionally give bachsights. Being related to the owner I think they were trying to get me to quit because I probably wasn't very good. I'm still at it and those first crew chiefs are good friends of mine.

Dang, looking at the date I've got a 40 year anniversary coming up. 35 year weddding anniversary coming up too.

Andy

My first "real" job started in March, 1984; I had a lot of jobs before that but they were part time or summer jobs. I was 21, married and needed a regular, full-time job. My boss and I went out to the truck, he pulled out the wood and threw it aside as follows, "Ginee, hub, guard stake, lath, don't forget it."

The first ten years was a small Civil Engineering firm which never had more than two weeks work for me in the future. It finally ended in 1994; I was laid off due to an embezzlement which had financially staggered the company and the poor stretch of the land development economy which they couldn't bridge. It turns out they did me a favor throwing me out on the street but it didn't seem that way at the time.

During the first ten years I did a variety of things, Surveying, drafting, design, hydrology and hydraulics, even Micropass energy calculations. Then I worked for a city where I added Construction Inspection and Management. Surveying is the best and most satisfying of all of those. You see a 20 year old building and no one cares who built it or what the problems or change orders were. You see a 20 year old Lot and there is a license tag there and a map readily available at the Recorders.

I have found a few 130 year old monuments and more than a few bona fide perpetuations.

Now I have learned that a guard stake is a hub in Illinois (subordinate employee) and maybe a flat in Southern California. A Lath (soft th) is a Lath (hard th).

August 11, 1975, 18 years old.

We staked grading at a new addition to Boystown, in Omaha NE.

Never looked back...;-)

For the few months I spent every morning sharpening my machete, the axe and ditch bank blade.

The rest of the time I chopped, hacked, raked back layers of ground, dug, busted brush and fetched whatever we needed. I began to think that surveyors never crossed open ground except to get to the truck.

We never walked around any water that could be taped across. Chief would attach as many as four babbitt end to end tapes together to accomplish that cause he did not have five or more.

There were no rain outs. No electronic anything, nothing that would stop working if it got wet. Only lightning would stop everything in its tracts and then we could not get out of there fast enough.

At age five, in 1953.

Dad and Cap Anderson let me carry a couple of pipes. The barbed wire fences were about eight feet tall and the holsteins were as big as a house.

Looking back from that time forward, the thing most amazing to me was that for almost all of my field time up to the 1970's the party chief was a registered surveyor.

"the thing most amazing to me was that for almost all of my field time up to the 1970's the party chief was a registered surveyor."

And still should be today, IMHO.