My Five Decades as a Land Surveyor

My Five Decades

Of Land Surveying

Cleo E. McCall, PLS

CONTENTS

Chapter  1       1963-1974…………………………………..5

Chapter  2       1974-1976…………………………………..28

Chapter  3       1976-1977………………………….……….40

Chapter  4       1977-1980…………………………………..48

Chapter  5       1980…………………...……………………65

Chapter  6       1980-1983…………………………………..75

Chapter  7       1983………….……………………………..89

Chapter  8       1983-1986…………………...……..……….92        

Chapter  9       1986-1987…………………………...…….107

Chapter  10     1987-1989……………………...………….109

Chapter  11     1989-1990…………………………………114

Chapter  12     1990-1992…………………………………119

Chapter  13     1992-2017…………………………………128

CHAPTER  1

Beginning in northwestern Iowa

1963-1974

Entering the surveying business was purely accidental.  I was raised on several Iowa farms where my father leased farmland as a tenant farmer.  After high school graduation, I had moved to California for a few years, then decided to come back to Iowa.  My parents were living on a farm (but not farming anymore) and I stayed with them. After a short time working odd jobs my opportunity arrived.

While playing pool in a tavern in Onawa, Iowa, I met another young guy named Dean Earlandson who was leaving for the service. He told me I should apply for his old job working at an engineering/land surveying company.

Soon, I interviewed for and got the job at Virtue Engineering there in Onawa.  It was owned by two brothers named Jack and Terry Virtue.  That began my long surveying career.   The year was 1963.

           

This photo was snapped of me working with a Wild T1a theodolite on a freezing day staking out a   mobile home park on a hill in Sioux City, Iowa. 

My first position was rear chainman.  We didn’t use a Gunter’s chain like the original U.S. surveyors did.  It was a 100-foot steel tape that we measured with while using plumb bobs to keep the tape level. 

As time went by and as crew members came and went, I became the front chainman having a few more responsibilities for making accurate measurements.

 Then I advanced to instrument man, which started with the Gurley transit (shown next).

              

This instrument turned angles to 20 seconds of a degree.  A magnifying glass had to be used to read the horizontal and vertical angles.  It took considerable more practice to correctly operate this instrument than the newer theodolites and total station instruments to come.  For locating metal property corner pins, we used a dip needle shown below.  It acted like a compass needle when near iron and would indicate when we were over a buried corner pin.

                              

In a few months, the company purchased the Wild T1a mentioned earlier and shown here.

                               

We also used a level for work requiring elevations and cuts and fills for contractors to use in their work on our engineering projects; the Wild NA2.

                         

The Virtue Engineering office was in a block building above a local trucking firm. It was located about ten miles from where I lived in another farm

house that my parents had moved into.   Here I am working in the Loomis Building.

                   

        

                           

       

Much of our work consisted of doing calculating, the drafting of plans, and typing legal descriptions.  When a deed copy was needed for a client’s neighboring lot, a trip to the Court House was necessary.  Photo copiers were not invented yet, so a clipboard and tablet were used instead to hand copy the deeds.

Besides doing property boundary surveys, a lot of engineering data was collected on various types of jobs.  Topography surveys were one of the primary tasks.  This area of western Iowa lies in the Missouri River floodplain.  Over the centuries the fast flowing “Old Muddy” overflowed its banks creating some of the richest black soil in the world.  In the middle of the 20^th century the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers straightened the river and made it flood proof with stone revetments and rip rap, etc. 

This rich black soil is locally called “gumbo”.  When wet, it is slippery yet stickey.  When dry, it turns hard and large cracks form on the surface.  This flood plain was miles wide in some areas; up to fifteen miles or more.  Due to its nature, the farms were sometimes too wet because the water would not soak in well.  On the other hand, its crop yeilds were much higher when leveled off in order to gather the water into drainage ditches.  Also with the ground shaped this way, it was in ideal condition to be irrigated. 

Our crews would need to stake fields with a 100 foot grid of laths, then shoot elevations on each one and provide cut sheets for the contractor to shape them as designed.  First, they used large scrapers (some pulled by bull dozers; others were self propelled), then they would use large planar machines to make the fields  smooth.  One land investor from Omaha, Nebraska would buy up land by the section (square mile).  We were amused to see him go out on the newly leveled fields in his new Cadillac throwing up a long trail of dust to get a feel for how smooth of a job had been accomplished.  Once I calculated approximately how many acres we had done topos for and it came to over 5,000 acres during the time I had worked here.  Most, but not all, were owned by this same man. 

We surveyed the farm buildings and houses from most of his land so that they could be sold off as residences.  At this time many small farms were being combined into large operations as our country became more urbanized.  On one of these home sites I was talking with a farmer in his driveway when his German Shepard quiety walked up behind me and bit the calf of my leg.  That hurt!  The farmer ignored the incident didn’t even apologize.

Weather conditions could be brutal at times in winter or in summer in Iowa.  Insect pests were another problem.  One sweltering day we were doing a topo where the mosquitos were terrible.  We had a new young man helping us on his first day.  He couldn’t take it any longer and started walking down the gravel road back to town.  Unless he was able to catch a ride, he had about fifteen miles to walk!

On one of winter’s extreme cold days with temperatures below zero, we were taking cross sections of a drainage ditch which dumped into the Missouri River.  We gathered dry reeds and sticks and made a bonfire to try to warm up with.  Many times I would go home at the end of the day with feet still numb.  I would even open up the oven door of my mother’s stove and put my feet still in my boots on it.  I would sit in front of the oven thawing the numbness out, which also caused my feet and toes to hurt somewhat.  On one project we dug for three days for a single section corner monument covered over by road construction much earlier.  We used a pick ax, frost bar and tile spade, making a hole about four feet deep.  We would cover it up each day with leaves and long grass inside the hole so digging could easily be continued the next morning.

On another much warmer day, I got muddy water over the top of my knee boots.  I found a concrete culvert to sit on and proceeded to remove my boots to empty them.  Unfortunately, when I raised my leg, the smelly, muddy water ran clear up my leg soaking my jeans.

One day our crew of three was crossing a creek.  With a running jump, the first two made it across.  When my turn came, I attempted to grab a low hanging limb to aid me, but it snapped off and I fell into the middle and had to wade out.  The other guys couldn’t keep from laughing and jeering.

Sometimes strange things would happen that were difficult to forget.  On one of the topo jobs for a local farmer we were out in the middle of a large field when I saw a sight that seemed unbelievable.  On the horizon to the west several miles away, we saw an American flag moving along!  It appeared to be smal as a postage stamp.  After some discussion and much thought, we realized that it had to have been the flag pole on a barge going down the Missouri River.  They were a common sight, but not from this perspective!

Doing a property survey near Pisgah, Iowa on a warm day,  I was looking through the telecope of my instrument at my rodman holding the red and white range pole in the center of the asphalt highway near the top of a hill.  When I focused on him, I was surprised to see a perfect mirage of him.  It was as though he was standing on a large mirror. 

On the same day another strange thing happened that defies all odds.  I needed to project a straight line from a point at the bottom of a long hill over to a point on the other side of the hill.  This being before having our modern equipment, we used the method of “balancing in”.  Simply put, it was a trial and error method of setting the instrument somewhere in the middle of the road on top of the hill, take a sight on the first point, plunge the telescope 180 degrees and estimate how far the cross hairs missed left or right from the second point.  Normally this could take some time to keep moving the instrument, leveling it up, and checking the alignment again and again until it was on an exact line with both points.  Well, this time I made my first guess on this gravel road which was somewhat crooked.  I leveled, sighted the first point, plunged the scope 180 degrees, focused in and landed dead center on the range pole!  I called one of the crew members over right away to look for himself to vouch for what was unbelievably lucky.

One of our largest projects was working on the Floyd River flood protection project in Sioux City.  This river ran through a portion of the city and spilled into the Missouri River at the edge of the city.  We worked in conjunction with the Omaha District of the Corps of Engineers on this several mile long project.

While walking along near the river, I was carrying a 12 foot long metal range pole and was about 100 feet ahead of a co-worker.  He yelled to me that he found a rubber ball.  In jest, I held the pole over my head and yelled for him to pitch it to me.  He threw it hard and high.  Pretending I would hit it, I raised it up as far as I could and did a slow swing toward him.  I hit the ball perfectly (by accident) and it sailed way over his head.  Hilarious laughter ensued.

Near the same place on another day we were taking cross sections of the channel area.  I held the level rod (marked with feet and tenths of feet and adjustable to 16 feet high) in one hand and the 100 foot long cloth tape in the other.  Things went well until I got stuck in the murky mud.  Fortunately, a skilled crane operator was working close by.  He instructed me to wait for him to lower his drag line bucket beside me and then hold on tight.  He lifted me out and set me down on dry ground.  It’s hard to forget moments like that.

Technology has always been an important factor in surveying.  From using pencil and paper to calculate or a slide rule or mechanical calcultor, many obvious advancements have been made.

Virtue’s company purchased the first electronic distance measuring device (EDM) in the state of Iowa.

            

It was a Geodometer 6A.  It weighed in at 35 pounds.  It put out a beam of white light which would reflect off a prism target.  After turning dials and switches, we would record numbers for each measurement.  These would be converted later in the office into a distance.  It was rather slow and weighed thirty five pounds.  But it would make a measurement up to a mile away in daylight and two miles at night.  It was immensely useful in measuring across rivers or taking long shots across the hills, sometimes over the tops of trees. 

Soon, another type of instrument that measured with FM radio waves was put on the market.

     

It was a tellurometer that wasn’t as accurate as the geodometer, but could measure up to several miles away.  For many jobs, it was quite useful.  Once, though, we were trying to measure to its receiving station which happened to be over and beyond a railroad track.  We used headphones for operating this and we were astonished to hear a local radio station playing its music.  We had to change our position to obtain that measurement. 

Another duty that I performed for the company other than office work and as a party cheif was inspection of a paving project in Onawa.  We had staked sixty-seven blocks for new concrete paved streets.  A physical problem arose for me soon afterwards.

The skin on my ankles turned red and broke open, finally exposing part of the bone.  Several doctors had tried to treat it, but none had ever heard of anything like it.  Fortunately, one elderly doctor remembered a patient that many years ago, had something similar.  He had tried a particular medicine on him and it had worked.  After researching his records, he prescribed the same pills for me.  I don’t remember what the medicine was called, but it worked!  Within days my feet began to heal.  They had given me greater pain than anything prior to what I’d ever had.  I had quit my surveying job.  I was walking with a cane.  My pants legs had to be rolled up and socks couldn’t be worn.  The same doctor said that in a couple of more weeks, he would’ve had to amputate them.  Some pain was to remain for many months after and dark coloration remained for several years.  Years later someone I talked with knew of a similar case his friend had.  They diagnosed his as “concrete poisoning” that caused the blood infection.  I then recalled that I was doing the concrete paving inspection for the engineers at the time of my illness.

Soon after my recovery, I went to work for a life insurance company.  I got my insurance license and worked with a crew of about five others.  We would work a county together for about two weeks at a time.     After a few months selling insurance, my feet had almost healed, so I got my old surveying job back.   I had been doing all the company’s drafting along with helping with the field work.  So now I stayed inside just doing drafting and office work until my feet got back to normal.

I had studied how to freehand letter in different styles by using one of the text books that Mr. Virtue had kept from his college days.  My course on Surveying and Mapping from the International School of Correspondence also had instructions on this.  Much of the drafting and lettering was done on plastic mylar sheets using a Rapidograph ink pen.  I would first use the Ames Lettering Guide with its adjustable tiny holes to insert a drafting pencil holding blue lead in it.  After making the guide lines, I would use a regular drafting pencil to first do the lettering in pencil, then overlaying it with the pen.  The pencil work would then be erased.

In a few weeks, I was outside doing field work as usual.  Office work was usually reserved for rainy or snowy days.  Some of our jobs were particularly interesting and stayed in my memory.

One such job was working on a housing project in Sergeant Bluff, near Sioux City, Iowa.  Nearby was an airfield once used by the Air Force.  This project already had been developed and had houses that the personnel had lived in. 

When the Air Force changed locations, all the houses were left empty.  A land developer purchased the property, but needed it all surveyed because there was no official plat with lot numbers or even any property lines. 

This was the only kind of situation I have ever heard of.  There was no record of the original design of the streets or anything, so we chose where to put the lot lines on the entire site.  We decided which lot might get a nice bush or tree, etc. 

For property markers, we went to Onawa’s junk dealer and requested old car axels to be cut up with their torch.  We would take a load with us each time we drove up to the site, then stockpile them until we needed them.

When the project was completed, I drew up a new plat so that the sales could begin. The lots sold off quickly.  On this plat, I used the Leroy lettering guide set to do the lettering.  For plats that would have to filed at the County Courthouse Recorder’s Office, we always inked them on mylar to be stored in the records.

          Another thing happened at Salix, Iowa which is the first town south of Sergeant Bluff.  We had just finished our day doing a property survey of a person’s lot.  We were driving away when we saw two neighbors flopping a yard stick end over end from our new marker.  They were also carrying a hammer and their own pin to put on their lot corner.  Just another reason that measurements don’t always come out right.

          Some days didn’t go as well as others, of course.

While doing a new subdivision in Mapleton, Iowa, we lost the use of our range pole.  I had left it in the center of a railroad track in a plumbed position for a back sight for the instrument man to turn an angle from.  It seemed safe to leave it for a while, since the track was so seldom used it was getting rusty and weeds were growing between the ties.

          Wouldn’t you know it, though, this was the exact time a train would show up.  We heard it coming, so I began to run down the tracks to retrieve it.  I was a few seconds late and all that I got was the ruined pole bent in half.

          This was the same town where two neighbors argued over their common property line.  When we finished our survey, it went to the Judge.  We learned our client’s neighbor was made to saw off the overhang of the roof of the old garage.  I never liked getting into a spite situation.

          Below is a copy of the subdivision being made when the range pole was hit by a train.

         

This was another of my drafting projects.  Early on, I also did most of the legal description writings even before being licensed.

          Between the time that my feet healed and when I got my old job back at Virtue’s, a traveling survey crew working for one of the largest firms in the country (Michael Baker, Jr.), approached me with a job offer to be their instrument man, so I accepted.

          They were doing as-built measurements from Carol, Iowa to North Bend, Nebraska.  It was part of a buried cable line from Boston to San Francisco.  The job paid well and looked like a promising adventure and advancement opportunity.

          We measured with a 300-foot tape between the splices, valves, and angle points in the line, recording the distances of the line as constructed.  Much of this time was across fields that were muddy.  Sometimes, it was necessary to put the tape across our shoulder so we could pull the weight of the long muddy tape.  I was the one who also recorded the angles with an old instrument they provided me with.

          After a few weeks, we reached the end of this assignment in North Bend.  Then the party chief was given notice that the next project in another state had been stopped by heavy snow, so he and the whole crew of four men were laid off indefinitely. 

          Fortunately, the Virtue brothers offered my old job back and even gave me a raise in pay.  So, everything was back to normal.

          One project was done on Iowa land, but we had to go to the Nebraska side of the Missouri River to do it.  When the Corps of Engineers did the flood protection project, they would sometimes redirect the channel to a new location.  This had happened here and left an island still owned by Iowa.  A developer purchased the island for a marina project and needed it surveyed.  It was about a mile in length and made an interesting project for us.

          The lands along the Iowa side of the river in Monona County where I lived and worked became in dispute of the ownership between farmers and the Omaha Indian Tribe.  It went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Indians won the case, so the farmers lost hundreds of acres from their farms.  Many of them were second or third generation farmers and the lands had been cleared and made into valuable crop land. 

          The battle was over the intent of the 1943 Compact Line of the State boundaries.  The photo below (at too small of scale to read here) shows the river as surveyed in 1804 by Lewis and Clark.  The Compact Line is superimposed.  The original agreement with the Indians was to simply use the center of the river as the boundary between the States.  However, the river changed courses over the years until the flood protection project stabilized it.  The Courts held that the intent was to mean the river as it existed at that time.  The Indians attorneys hired a drilling company to drill holes on the Iowa side to determine by the soil samples where the old banks were. 

          It was discovered that the 1943 Compact Line no longer determined the boundary.  The Indians have since rented their farmland and have built two casinos, one near Onawa and one near Sloan.  Our company was used to survey areas of the new ownership.

          The maps or drawings I show are usually too small to read here, but are included to show varieties.

         

An amusing incident occurred when our crew went to do a survey for a lady who owned a farm and wanted its lines monumented at the corners.  Upon arrival, she came out to meet the crew and proceeded to instruct them where to put the markers.  They tried to reason with her that she could not choose where they belonged; that was the surveyor’s role.  She wouldn’t listen to reason, so they explained to us when they got back that they “picked up their toys” and went home.

Somewhat less amusing was a topographic job we had to do in the winter which included getting elevations of the lake bottom.  It had about eight inches of ice covering it, making it possible to walk around on.  At certain intervals, though, we had to use an ax to chop holes through the ice to drop our level rod down for the instrument man get to obtain his shot on it.  Usually, we got splashed all over with the cold water!

While looking at a Sunday paper while visiting my parents’ house, I glanced at the want ads, and an advertisement for a Vermillion, South Dakota job seemed to leap out at me.  I went to be interviewed by the City Engineer and was hired.  So, my wife, Shirley, four-year old son, Steven, and two-year old daughter, Carol made our first of many moves together.

This was in 1974, after spending eleven years working for Virtue Engineering.  The new job was to be an Assistant City Engineer.

CHAPTER  2

Getting licensed in South Dakota

1974-1976

Now, I had advanced my training from varied experience and by taking the I.C.S. course in Surveying and Mapping.  I found that I could sit for my Professional Land Surveyor in Training exam after having eight years of experience under a licensed surveyor.  So, I had gone to Ames, Iowa, taken the exam and passed it for my certificate.

Soon afterward, another surveyor told me that with twelve years’ experience I would qualify to take the Professional exam. 

Since South Dakota only required eight years’ experience to sit for the Surveyor exam, I soon took and passed it for my first Land Surveyor license.

          This exam was an extremely long and difficult one designed to slow the number of Licensed Surveyors that were becoming “moonlighters” while working for the South Dakota Department of Transportation.  At least, that was what surveyors were saying. 

It consisted of an unheard-of portion that was to be completed in six weeks and another exam to be taken at the School of Mines in Rapid City consisting of one half day.  I have never heard of any other exam like this being a take home test.  Thus, only one out of state person got his license and only a few in South Dakota.  I was one who received my license, but did have to retake one portion of it. 

          To pass the exam, one had to have access to the State’s laws, an ephemeris, and handbook that the original surveyors used to lay out the latitudinal curve of the earth to survey the township and range lines with.

Many would not even have the time to prepare for such a test, but I was allowed a lot of time while on the job in City Hall as Assistant Engineer.  I had access to the City’s law library for the legal questions I had to answer.  By contacting the U.S. Government, I received by mail the ephemeris and booklets that was needed. 

Although it was discouraging trying to pass such an exam (which they never gave again), it was helpful in that my future exams in other states were much easier.

          There were one hundred questions concerning laws relating to surveying.  Other questions were on mathematical solutions and on errors and accuracies, to name a few.

          Then we were required to do a fictitious survey of several miles of sectioned land, calculating in the missing corners using rules of the 1973 Manual of Surveying Instructions from the Government Land Office, then putting it all together on a faux plat of survey with all its certificates, and so on.

          It was no wonder that many would not be able to complete this type of exam, even in six weeks.

          Below is a small part of working on the State Plane Coordinate System.  Again, specific manuals had to be used for this problem. 

          We were to show every step of our work solving all the examination questions.

Here is just one of seventeen pages that I made just answering one problem!

                                            

          With todays’ computers, this problem would have been much easier and quicker to answer.  As it were, I had purchased a state of the art calculator just to take the test.  It was a King’s Point SC40 which I had to obtain by driving clear to Omaha, Nebraska to purchase for $385.  That was comparable to the cost of buying a computer now days.

          This was not programable, but the things that it had that made it so important was the trigonometry functions and the square root function.  It was much easier than looking the trig functions up in a huge book like I used to do.  And not having to solve square roots manually was a huge time saver.  These things are taken for granted in the cheapest calculators today.

         

The City Engineer, Joe Gillen, was also a Registered Land Surveyor.  He also did private work around the area on weekends using the City’s equipment.  He let me assist him as well as letting me do my own “moonlighting” in my spare time after work or on weekends.  He was a great guy to work for and with.

While working together one summer day, I saw him waving his arms frantically.  I found that he was allergic to bee stings, and there were a couple of bees flying around him.  If one stung him, it would put him in a lot of danger, he explained.

          One of my duties was inspections; mobile home courts, weed control, fire hazard control, sewer and water construction, and others.  This was a time when many of the City’s elm trees were dying of Dutch Elm disease.  I had to paint red X’s on the dead ones, and let out contracts for their removal.  The tree ownership problems on private land also provided extra income for me in my spare time after work.  The City purchased a new van for me right after employing me.  I would attend meetings with the City Engineer and eventually got elected as the State Vice President of the Building Officials and Code Administrators.

                 

It was not always enjoyable, as I had to hand out summons for court appearances if they failed to meet the code soon enough after my warning.  With a transient population of college students living in fifteen of our mobile home parks in a tornado prone area, that alone was reason enough to enforce the laws.

          I was unable to save any of my plats that I drew of lot surveys and subdivisions on my private business.  However, I have my field books yet, with the sketches and measurements in them, one of which I am including in an example below.

         

          An interesting event happened one day on a private job for a farmer north of Vermillion.  The farmer came out to the site to meet us, and while we were starting to drive an iron pin in the center of the gravel road, using evidence of an old fence line.  It was to become the South Quarter Corner of his section of land.  As he watched, the pin bounced upward by striking something hard about a foot deep.  We carefully dug out a hole and found the original stone marking the corner.  Not only did we find it, there was a fresh small mark on top of a carved X from our pin striking it.  We hit it dead center and the farmer was amazed and said “you guys are good!” 

  

One hot summer whenever I wasn’t busy with my other duties, my assistant and I would go to “Lower Vermillion” which was the original town’s location was.  It laid near the Missouri River and in the 1800’s the town was destroyed by a flood.  A railroad is still used that runs through the area, so rebuilding of grain elevators, houses, etc. had been done.  But the streets were all unimproved with no paving, sewer or water mains installed.  To just keep busy, we would uncover old markers (some 3 feet deep) at various street intersections near the railroad).  Then I did a resurvey of the entire old town.  The street department made a lot of concrete monuments for me that I placed on a corner of each block to perpetuate the street locations.  Much to our surprise, Vermillion had an opportunity to apply for a Federal Grant of about $250,00 for improvements.  By using a long strip map that I drew of my survey work, the grant was approved.  New concrete streets, sewer and water was then placed, opening the area up for more controlled growth.

It came in useful for a lot of our private work in establishing much needed property line locations, also. We showed reference measurement ties from all the corners to objects like fire hydrants, nails in trees or poles, concrete step corners, etc.

One incident occurred while we were staking for a new curb line.  An elderly lady came out of her house and told us that if anyone removed her bushes, she had a gun and would shoot them!  I don’t know whatever resulted in that.

          Another challenge I had was working with a young man who had epilepsy.  But if he forgot to take his medicine, he would have a seizure.  One of these happened while we were working on an open sewer construction site.  There were many thick weeds called sandburs that would stick on your clothes or even your skin.  This is where he collapsed.  I grabbed one of my leather gloves, rolled it up, put it over his tongue, and waited for his recovery.  He then, as always, was taken back to the office so that he could go home and rest up.

While having lunch one day in a local café, I choked on some bread and couldn’t breathe in or out for so long that a crowd gathered around me.  A city worker that I was sitting next to saved me when I motioned for him to hit me on the back.  After a couple of tries, I could breathe again, after starting to see black spots before my eyes. Ironically, next to my office was the ambulance garage and I remembered seeing a new poster showing the new Heimlich maneuver.  Many years later, I could save my mother from choking on a piece of meat using this new method.

CHAPTER  3

Back to a private company

1976-1977

          One day, while sitting in my office at City Hall, an engineer who was a partner in the engineering and land surveying firm of Schmucker, Paul, and Nohr in Mitchell, South Dakota, came in and explained that he had learned that I had passed the surveyor exam which he said was the most difficult they ever had.

          He was wanting to take his exam and asked to borrow my booklets and legal information.  He went on to take his exam with this help and passed it.  But while he was in town to see me, he went to the local newspaper and put in an ad for a surveyor.  He didn’t have a way of just asking me in front of my boss, so this is the way he handled it, hoping I would find it.  Now, I rarely even looked at newspapers at that time, but for some reason my eyes fell on the ad.  I contacted him, got an interview and was immediately hired.

          Interestingly, their office was across the street from the famed Corn Palace.  It also was only a few blocks from a house we had purchased.

   

          Since they knew that I had to learned how to do a solar observation for true north, they had saved a job for me to do.  It was for a new airport and it had to have a plat made with the true north bearings on it.

          The instrument I used for this job was a nice Wild T2 Theodolite, with one-second of a degree angle turning capability.   We also had the latest EDM technology called a Distomat.  It used infra red lazer light to measure with.  One had to get on their knee, bend over the rubber sighting attachment and record numbers from a spinning wheel in the heavy box sitting below it.

            

                       

         

          Another one of the first jobs that I had with this company was in Mitchell.  Most our work consisted of projects all over eastern South Dakota. 

          This survey was for a new Kmart to be built.  The interesting thing was that as we searched for the existing property corner pins, we found them, but they did not fit well at all.  Some were a few feet off.   Pondering what had happened to our evidence we were seeking to complete the boundary with, a man watching us came up and explained.  He said that the dozer operator who was clearing the site would notice that he scraped out a pin.  Knowing they were important, he “reset” them “about” where he thought they came from.  Of course, he should have left them

out to avoid confusion or mistakes later in the boundary.

    

          Having worked on many types of construction projects and surveying new subdivisions, I’ve seen a large variety of surveys.  One of the stranger projects was doing a cemetery addition survey, staking the small lots out.

          Occasionally, I could make use of an early calculator (or “computer”) that used small paper cards, each with a different small program on it. 

          I would like to remember its name, but even as a calculator collector, I have never seen another one of these.

           

   

Here at Mitchell, I purchased my second calculator.  It was an HP 25C.  I remember it cost a whopping $250. It was the first continuous memory calculator ever made and you could also type in short programs, which made it much more useful than my Kings Point. 

I still have all of the calculators that I purchased over the years.  In fact, I eventually became a collector.  I bought any old collectible (preferably an electronic) that I could find at garage sales, thrift stores, etc.  I also bought and sold a lot of them on eBay.  I continued to upgrade duplicates to “mint in the box” quality or close to it.  I decided to sell about five hundred of them several years ago.  I kept about a hundred or so of my favorites.  Some have had values in the hundreds of dollars.  At one point, I had about sixty mint-in-the-box TI calculators.

 

          One day while working in Mitchell, I received a letter from an engineering/land surveying company in West Union, Iowa.  It was from Bert B. Hanson and Associates.  They saw somewhere that I had obtained my Iowa license and they needed a surveyor in one of their branch offices located in Independence, Iowa.  I was intrigued, because I might be able to work in my home state using my new license.  The pay offer was good, too.  Besides that, they offered to charter a plane to fly Shirley and myself out there for the interview.  So, we did that and I was hired.

CHAPTER  4

Back to eastern Iowa

1977-1980

          As mentioned earlier, I had acquired the needed experience to sit for the Iowa Land Surveyors examination.  I had gone to Iowa State College at Ames for the test.  This one, I got on the first try.

         

      

           

          It was 1977 and now I was surveying in eastern Iowa.  I was given a new panel truck to drive.  They had good equipment to use and they were nice to work for.  They had five offices, altogether, and I usually worked out of this one, but sometimes in the Cedar Falls office.  There was always a nice variety of jobs to do.

    

          They gave me my first “computer” to use. It was an HP9810A calculator, and used magnetic program cards and had a printout capability.

      

          Again, I got to use a new EDM instrument.  They had begun to be instrument mounted now, instead of a stand-along type.  Its name was “Beetle”.  It would measure the slope distance only.  Therefore, I bought a small flat pocket calculator so I could convert all my distances to the horizontal on the spot, after recording the vertical angle. Technology would continue to improve in the future. 

          We still used the old methods of measuring with a steel tape and plumb bobs along straight or random lines, sometimes having to offset the lines from trees, etc. part of the time.  But with the new instrument and the aid of the computer to calculate from coordinates, surveying was more fun, quicker, and more accurate. 

          Independence, Iowa’s main road happens to lay on the Second Correction Line of Iowa.  The original surveys done by the government deputy surveyor contractors had the task of dividing up the western territories into (nearly) square parcels of one mile, which were then further subdivided into four quarter sections of 160 acres each (approximately).  There were to be 36 of these sections in a township.  The townships were to lie in larger tracts (usually 24 miles long).  Since the earth is a sphere, corrections had to be made of several kinds.  Imagine the shape of an orange with its slices.  As the surveys advanced further north, there had to be these correction lines run in first and then start a new series of these approximately square sections. 

U.S. Highway 20 was the main road through town, and after completing an expensive survey for a new Hardee’s restaurant on the highway; then a few more jobs along the same, I decided to spend our spare time completing the entire line through town.  It required a lot of research of original plat copies, looking for section corners, etc.  Strict rules were followed to establish the section corners along either side of the line.

 Eventually, we completed the whole line through town, and I drew a long strip map and recorded it with the County Recorder and the County Engineer.   

          This reminds me of another survey regarding the same correction line.  My father-in-law asked me to survey his property in the Town of Correctionville, Iowa.  Many people assume the town was named after a correction facility perhaps.  However, it was named after the fact that it was built along and on both sides of the survey correction line.  In fact, this created a jog on their mains street.

          The town’s motto is “Jog Down Our Main Street” and they have a plaque commemorating it along their Main Street. 

                

   

          My wife’s parents lived there in Correctionville, and my father-in-law helped me survey his lot.

          A few of the typical surveys in the area around Independence are shown on the pages to follow.  They varied from small lot surveys to major subdivisions.

         

       

         

 

            One day we were placing our survey markers around a property in Independence, when we noticed a man carrying a bucket coming towards us.  He had a spade in one hand as well.  As soon as we got done driving in our “T-bar with cap” marker, he immediately would dig a hole around it and pour in concrete from his bucket.  We joked with each other, saying “we better have these in the right place and not have to adjust any!”

            The only time that I used snow shoes was on a project  near the little town of Hazelton.  There had been a lot of snow and they made the job much easier.  The fields had large drifts of soft snow covering parts of them.  I recall how I could step right over the top wire of a fence while wearing these snow shoes.  My instrument man carried a scoop shovel with him and would scoop up to three feet of snow from an area around the point he would set the equipment over.  I carried one of the prism poles to give him his shots for data collection.

          This was probably the first time that our survey crews had two-way radios to use.  Although they were quite large, they were a real blessing.  We used to use arm signals to each other, sometimes aided with binoculars.  At other times, we would use the vehicle horn or lights, or even whistles when waving a flag was even too difficult to see at long distances.

          As technology advanced, we were to use smaller and more powerful FM two-way radios.  At my first job we had a 100-foot high tower at the office building that was for the trucking firm’s CB’s.  We had a business band radio installed in our panel truck.  If we parked it on a high hill, we could contact our office from forty miles away.

          Of course, presently, every one carries a smart phone.  I still like to use two-way radios though.  They are small, much less expensive, and with much more range than in previous times.

          My crew came in laughing one day, telling of an Amish farmer who walked out to ask them what they were doing.  They said they were measuring from that corner over there a half mile away to another the other way with their EDM.  He said “sure you are” and walked away in disbelief.

Around this time I became a member of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping.  At one of the Survey Conventions that we attended yearly to obtain our continuing education units, a call was put out asking for papers to publish in their magazine.

          

          Since it was a slow time in the winter that year, I began to write an article for this national magazine.

There had been many arguments and disscusions over how to establish the center of a section is those states having been laid out in the rectangular system. 

I had subdivided a number of sections while surveying people’s farms in South Dakota and Iowa, so I wanted to give my views on the subject.  It was printed and I was surprised to later receive an award from our Society of Land Surveyors.

  I knew a land surveyor who had been a professor at Iowa State College who lived there in Ames.  He graciously shared some legal case references for me to support my views which he strongly agreed with.

Following is a photo of the complimentary copy of the magazine and another showing just the first of several pages of the article.

      

Probably the strangest survey project that I have been involved in was inside of a nuclear power plant building in Palo, Iowa.  First my crew members and I had to attend classes at the plant regarding rules and safety.  Then we bagan our project that took two weeks to complete.

It was our job to ensure that the storage racks for the spent fuel rods were level before and after being submerged in the forty-foot deep cooling pool.

We had to buy an new level instrument and tripod and level rod, which would have to be left inside the plant when we were finished.  Then we attached a carpenter’s tape with 1/32^nd of an inch markings on it to the level rod.

It was necessary to wear a docimeter to check the radiation levels.  We had to change into a special plastic suits and boots.  Air lock passages and such had to be passed through on entering and leaving each day.

Using a ladder we climbed atop the fifteen-foot high racks.  A plywood sheet was placed for the tripod feet and another for me to place my knees on to operate the instrument.  The tripod was set at its lowest height.  Then, my rodmad would carefully make his way around the tops of other racks, giving me the shots.  I had a form provided on which to enter all the data.  Construction men then leveled them from that data.

I was glad the rodman was so brave to do his part.  If we fell, we would crash into a nearby rack before hitting the concrete below.

When they had all been leveled we set up near the pool’s edge and with radios we instructed underwater divers how much to adjust them after being placed in the water with a crane.  We would continually take readings to 1/32^nd of an inch as they advanced from one rack to another.

Above is a photo of the Palo Nuclear Power plant near Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

CHAPTER  5

A “Working Vacation in Florida”

1980

I enjoyed my time there at Independence, but in 1980, work slowed down.  The two engineers bought out the office from Hanson, and one of them had gotten his surveyor license.  I needed to look for another job.  I applied for a position advertised in a trade magazine for a job in Sarasota, Florida.  The engineers told me that we could use their new company car to drive down for an interview. 

I interviewed with a large company named Smally Wellford and Nalvin.  They needed someone to run a survey crew using a new state of the art instrument.  The Wild TC1 would measure distances and angles and do drafting codes for office work at the same time.  Only one other customer from New York City had used the system so far.  It would be operated part of the time from a thirty-foot tower.

A nice four-wheel drive pickup was supplied to me to use for work as well as my own private use.

         

They had a quaint two story office building to work in, plus an annex building holding all of the crews’ field equipment, boats, etc.

 

          While only working in Florida for a short time, I  joined their Society of Professional Surveyors as well as applied to take my exam for licensure.  I was accepted to do so, but I left to go back to Iowa before I could take the test.

          Their office was equipped with the latest computers.  It was still before Microsoft Windows came out, though.  They also furnished me with a new programable calculator called the HP67.  I continued to use it for several years and still have it in my collection.

                        

                                         

It was an interesting experience working in Florida.  We worked on everything from condos on the beaches to alligator and snake infested areas.  One job was even on a small island in the Gulf near Sarasota.

 

We used the pontoon to get to the island, then hand carried the tower components and other equipment to our set-up site where I could see in all directions to locate the edge of the island where the mangroves began. 

Once, a thunder storm approached us. So, after seeing the lightning flash, we would count to five listening for the clap to follow.  If it came after only five seconds had passed, I then needed to come down from the tower to prevent getting struck by lightning.  Showers would come and go quite often.  I also had to

wear a mosquito net due to the hordes of them bothering me while operating the instrument.

One day I was standing in a burned off palmetto field when I saw a movement.  Only about three feet away was an Eastern Diamond Back rattle snake.  It was around six feet long.  They are the largest variety of rattlers.  One of the other party chiefs working with me told me to stand still.  He came back with a level rod in one hand and a machete in the other.  He said over the years he would have one person pin the snake’s head down with the wooden rod, then he would cut its head off.  He told me that he used to collect the rattles, but after acquiring about 150 of them, he quit saving them.  This snake escaped, though, because he was hidden too well in the weeds to safely kill him. 

Another time, I was unknowingly standing on an ant hill.  They were fire ants and they crawled up my pants legs and all bit at once.  I almost passed out and had to take a break for a while.

Alligators were another hazard, as were water moccasins.  We often did topography near and through ponds and canals.  We watched for trails through the weeds leading to a clump which one might be raising her babies, then would carefully avoid getting too close. 

          One time when I was clearing a line around a pond with my machete, I saw one out in the water.  I wondered if a clump of elderberries would be snatched if I tossed them out to it.  Sure enough, it loudly smacked them up.  After doing this a couple times, I continued clearing.  Several minutes later, as I was clearing again, I came up on an alligator with its head resting on the bank, probably waiting for me.  It was large and looked like it could be the same one that I had fed.  I quickly detoured around that spot and didn’t tempt any more of them.

          One of the largest alligators that I have ever seen was walking across a golf course that we were working on.  There was even an “Alligator Crossing” sign at the cart way.  There were many little canals going through the residential developments that attracted the

alligators.

          Coming from the Midwest, and even after living in California, I saw many new kinds of birds and animals that I had only read about.  I recall the large pileated woodpecker chipping off large pieces of wood over my head.  I saw cute little burrowing owls as well as whip-poor-wills. I laughed when I unknowingly startled an armadillo.  He saw me and jumped straight up in the air about two feet high.  I’ve heard they do that when alarmed and that’s why so many get hit by traffic.

          Another kind of bird that I’d never seen before was the brown pelican.  I was stationed along the bay doing tide gauge readings for a couple of days.  I enjoyed tossing bits of my sandwich to them.  This happened to be close to the house that entertainer Cher owned.  It was rented by other people while she was away.  My company arranged with them for me to use their restroom, as I had only ten minutes between readings all day long and couldn’t leave.  They obliged me, so I got to see Cher’s beautiful house.

          While most survey monuments that we install are made from concrete, I discovered they often had used shell monuments in Florida.  They used the abundant broken shells from the beach for aggregate instead of sand with the mortar to build them.   Working with some of these, I found that they had embedded nails sticking out of the top center of them.  But the salt air had rusted the heads to a needle-sharp point.  A plan of that same job is shown below.  Although too small to read here, it is obvious how much detail went into some of our surveys.

          My employers were pleased with my learning how to use the new equipment, even though we had to have its software writer come from Texas every week or two to work out the programming bugs.  The main problem with it was the difficulty to accurately estimate job cost.  We worked on some huge projects worth many thousands of dollars.  Our crew was doing some typical jobs two or three times as fast as the old methods.  Jobs differed, though, in their complexities.  Some we could do using the tower, but others were impossible to use it.  My boss was losing a lot of money because he sometimes bid the jobs too low. 

Eventually they gave up on the equipment and didn’t need me anymore.  They let me go on good terms with a nice recommendation.  I had only been there for six months.  I later observed that no one in the surveying business ever started using this equipment.  We called it “our working vacation” because we had a good time while there.

CHAPTER  6

Back to central Iowa

1980-1983

         

          We had decided to go back to Iowa, visit our families and try for a new job.  Shirley, being a Registered Nurse, never had problems finding work nor I, up till now.

          On our way to northwestern Iowa we stopped over for one night at Independence.  We visited one of the men I had worked with and he said he had seen an ad in the Sunday paper a week or two earlier for a surveyor.  He looked for it and was surprised that he still had it laying around.  It was for a Registered Land Surveyor at Winterset, Iowa, just west of Des Moines.

 I called that same afternoon and made an appointment on our way to northwestern Iowa.  After making my application and interview with Vance and Hochstetler Engineering, we drove to Correctionville, Iowa where Shirley’s parents lived.

 We stayed with them for a week, then I was notified that I got the job.  On the weekend, I moved to a motel in Winterset temporarily while the family stayed at Correctionville until we could get together a week later to find a new home.  We moved into an apartment complex at Indianola, south of Des Moines.

 

 

I had a variety of company trucks to work from.  Here, on the previous page, I am at our apartment in Indianola, Iowa.

I enjoyed the variety of survey work there in Madison County, where the movie “Bridges of Madison County” was made. 

     

The previous photo is of one of the bridges that had been moved to Winterset, Iowa’s City Park, which I did a survey on. Our office was here in Winterset, a small town west of Des Moines.

           

          When I started work in Winterset, I had been used to the most modern equipment.  Now I found that this survey company was still measuring with a steel tape.  Luckily for me, though, they had recently purchased a new TopCon EDM.  They did not use computers yet and were still using the new instrument on direct, straight line measurements.  I taught the crew how to set up on a hill and shoot coordinates to points rather than slowly projecting the lines up and down the slopes.  

Here I am working at a site for a new library in Indianola.  The topographic plan that I drew up  follows.

Our secretary served as my draftsperson.  She did a nice job, even though using outdated Wrico templates.  I would plot the jobs on paper using my programable calculator, then give it to her to trace and letter.

    

         

          Each survey had to be recorded at the County Court House, which was conveniently located across the street in the town square. 

Some of the surveys done here were the normal lot surveys or small farm parcels.  Others were quite large, even a few miles long covering hundreds of acres.  The following is just one sheet of a large survey.  I had to use match lines at the ends to finish the drawings.

       

            

 

An interesting property in Winterset that I got to survey was the birthplace of actor John Wayne.

  

            On the top of the hill in the Winterset City Park sits this stone tower.  Traversing up the winding road to the top required us to go in low gear most of

the way.  It required a lot of setups of the instrument to reach the top also.

I drew a large map of the park survey, but never kept a copy of it.

This company was using a man as party chief part of the time who lived in Indianola near me.  John was a nice man, but had his license revoked due to fradulent practices.  He was retired but brought work to us from his former associations with the people in that area.  He knew, though, when working with my crew, that I was in charge.  I did have to watch him closely.  In the company’s eagerness to get the extra work from him, they had been signing plans he was sometimes still fradulently working on for them.

This worked out alright for me, though, because now my employer, Mr. Vance had been turned in the Board of Examiners and was required to have all of them resurveyed properly.  I was then kept busy even through the winter months doing the resurveys. 

Around this time, I discovered an error on a parcel near Des Moines, Iowa done by a firm from there.  I notified them and they were glad to be able to correct it.  They then asked if I would come to work for them and manage an office in eastern Iowa at Marion, next to Cedar Rapids. 

CHAPTER  7

To eastern Iowa as office manager in 1983

The opportunity seemed good and I wasn’t too pleased for the way the present company was being operated, so I accepted.

That began my working for Anderson Consulting.  I seemed to have covered the whole State of Iowa now. 

       

          This time, again, my new secretary did the drafting.  Like before, I drew the boundary and notes in pencil and she redrew the plats in ink.

 A lot of our jobs were just doing location surveys for mortgages.  On these, I had to use a temporary help company for my assistants.  Usually I was able to get the same person.  Our equipment was out of date also.  When I did larger jobs, the crew from the Des Moines office would bring their crew and equipment to help me.

The following is a typical lot survey (not a title survey) which was done with a steel tape and theodolite.

          

         

CHAPTER 8

Next move to Omaha, Nebraska

1983-1986

While living in Marion, we went to visit Shirley’s sister Linda and her husband Allen in Lincoln, Nebraska while I took the exam at the State Surveyor’s office in Lincoln.  I thought it might be useful someday to have that state’s Surveyor license.

Surprisingly, in just a few months, Linda showed me a newspaper ad for a Land Surveyor in Omaha.  It was an opportunity to gain some new experience and be much closer to all our relatives.

The company had only engineers and an architect and needed a Land Surveyor.  The day I was interviewed I was hired by Lee and Batheja.  It seemed the company I had been with would hold little promise.  I felt that they hired me as a last resort to keep it afloat.

We then moved to Omaha and lived in a nice apartment complex nearby in Millard, Nebraska.  It was a nice place to work and I was even allowed to do private work on my own time using their equipment. 

They bought a new Nissan pickup for me to use both for work and personal use.  They also bought a new Ford van for us to use on construction projects.

               

          Winston Lee and Shawn Batheja were partners in a minority owned company and had contracts for dam breach studies of the Government.  Sometimes these would take us clear across Nebraska for a couple of weeks at a time.

          We also did construction preliminary surveys and staking for street paving and a couple of bridges.  Along with that, we had a lot of other interesting survey boundary work.  They furnished me with new instruments and everything that I needed.

          One of our dam breach study surveys in the northeastern part of the state was done during our coldest weather of the winter.  We wore layers of clothing and face masks.  The temperatures got well below zero and the winds picked up sending the wind chill to about 50 degrees below zero.  We eventually had to call it quits and wait for better weather.

Several projects were in downtown Omaha.  I’ve included a photo of me working on a survey for a new tower building.

        

             

We had two new Nikon theodolites like the one in this picture.  One of them had an aluminum tripod instead of a wooden one.  On a cold winter

day I was set up with it on a frozen asphalt parking lot on a high area of the city when a strong gust of air hit me.  It lifted the lightweight tripod up enough that its metal feet slide away, dropping the new instru-ment straight to the paving.  Rarely would I have left a wooden lath laying under the instrument, but sure enough, this time it was there.  The weight of the instrument made a round indentation on it and didn’t even tip over.  We had the calibration checked and it was working as good as ever.  What luck!

          On some of our larger projects, I had the use of the construction trailers for my calculations.

                   

            A memorable boundary that we performed in the Florence area of Omaha was interesting.  We were to survey the boundary and provide a plan for the Church of the Latter Day Saints.  This was the place where the Mormans spent the winter after making it across the Missouri River.  Many of them died here.  There is a small museum there that shows relics such as their handcart, etc.

Here, I am getting shots with the prism pole and keeping notes while my instrument man, Larry, is running the Nikon instrument with the mounted EDM plugged into our pickup battery for the power supply.

A Morman cart is in the gazebo behind me.  The Morman cemetery is across the street on a hill in front of me.

Following is the finished plan of this project.  As usual, I am including them even though they are too small to see the details.  They are shown just as examples of variable types.

          I have hundreds of saved copies of my old surveys that I scanned in over the years, but will only show a few samples.

We did many plot plans for house locations for just a low fee, as was standard at the time in Omaha.  I didn’t care much to have to do them, because they were done just using fences, etc.  In other words, they were not a real survey and a note even had to be put on the drawings stating as much.

            

       

One nice thing about working for Lee and Batheja was their giving me permission to do my own private surveys on my own time with the use of any of their equipment.  My son, Steven, began to help me do surveys for the first time.  He was to become my party chief and draftsman at various times in the future while working for other companies in New Jersey.

The County Surveyor’s office required that we draw our survey plans on paper that they provided.  All of the surveys had to be recorded within a certain amount of time as well.

One example of this type of survey is shown next.

          One survey that I will always remember occurred in near Columbus, Nebraska on January 28, 1986.  We were surveying a Stratigic Air Command underground bunker site that day.  We were attended by security guards wherever we went.  Our crew was on the gravel road at the gate of the drive to the bunker, when our guard received a two-way radio call from another guard.  He told us that he had just heard that the space shuttle Challenger had exploded, killing all seven crew members on board. 

That noon, when we were in town at a little café having our lunch, we watched the news footage of it being broadcast on their black and white TV set.

          Another time, we were working on a boundary dispute between two neighbors in Omaha one nice summer day.  One of them was an elderly man; the other an elderly woman.  As they argued loudly in front of us about the property line problem they had, I noticed that the lady spoke with a German accent.  I realized why, when I noticed a Jewish prisoner tattoo on her arm.  It was the only one I have ever seen in person.

          I was somewhat pleased to have been able to calm them both down by explaining things concerning their line.  Peace was made between them, I believe.

 

CHAPTER  9

Another job in Omaha

1986-1987

As some projects were getting completed the work was lessening, so when I was offered a job with Darrell Dangburg and Associates in Omaha, I accepted. 

I had been working on a boundary in Belview, near Offutt Air Force Base next to Omaha on a hilly area of the Missouri River bluffs, when I spotted a one-hundred-foot chain and reel laying in the crotch of a tree.  It was marked with the Dangburg company’s name.  I returned it to them and that was how I met the owner, Darrell Dangburg.  Only a short time later he offered me a job.

      

They were busy at the time and needed more help.  After some large projects were completed, things changed.

The economy was getting bad and after several months they too gave the survey crew notice that we would have our hours reduced fifty percent.  So, after working there for less than a year, I applied for some positions on the East Coast, where the economy was doing better and they were seeking land surveyors.

Shirley and I left Steven and Carol to continue in school for a few days without us.  We drove first to New Jersey, then to New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut for interviews.  Then we drove back to

Omaha and waited. 

CHAPTER  10

Our final move to New Jersey

1987-1989 at Medford

Soon, I had replies from all the companies that I had applied with.  My choice was the first one we had stopped at in Medford, New Jersey at Allan Kammerer and Associates. 

So, in 1987 we drove together to a new apartment complex in Marlton, near Medford.  The company paid for a moving company to move our household furniture and belongings.  Their office was in a renovated dairy barn. 

The interior was beautifully done.  The drafting department was on the second floor as was the lunch room.  A partial third floor was glassed in to be used as our computer room. 

The silo on the side of the building had been converted into a storage area for the wooden stakes and concrete monuments.  The former milk room was now the instrument storage room and work shop.

    

   

They furnished our crews with the best equipment.  We all were outfitted with a red Chevy Suburban.  Many of our projects were designing and laying out new subdivisions.  These would include boundary work, lot size and placement calculations, drafting, and finally staking the streets and utilities. 

Setting the lot corners and staking out the new house locations would follow.  After they were built, we would come back to do the as-built “Final Surveys”.

By doing a variety of work for this company, I gathered a lot of new experience. 

In a few months, I could qualify for the New Jersey licensing exam, which was held near Trenton.  It turned out to be an easier test for me than those I had taken before for licensure. 

Soon, I joined the New Jersey Society of Professional Land Surveyors and our local association of West Jersey.

Later, I also joined the other society called Garden State Land Surveyors Alliance.  They were in northern New Jersey.

   

     

         

          While working here, I purchased a hand-held computer called the HP 71B.  It had magnetic card strips with various programs.  They were also used to store coordinate points.  I used it more than the office computer at this company and continued using it for several years to come.  It is still in working condition, although it’s been retired for a long time.

         

         

          Only the owner, Allen Kammerrer, signed the plans of our surveys, so I am not showing any of the drawings here.

          I worked there in Medford for over two years, then was made an offer which would pay much more and would gain me some more varied experience.

CHAPTER  11

On to Berlin

1989-1990

My new job was with Key Engineers in Berlin, New Jersey.  It was only about a twenty-minute drive from home.  Steven had graduated from High School and had been working with me at Kammerer’s a short while.  He had worked for me occasionally for several years, so had some experience early on.  Key’s hired me, but also hired Steven and used him mostly in the office.

They were the Township Engineers for the local areas, so I gathered some more surveying variety experiences there.  We had a nice variety of construction projects as well as subdivision and property boundary work.

The first job that I signed in New Jersey was a unique one.  It was doing the boundary on a proposed land fill along Interstate 295.  They needed to put on latitude and longitude information on the survey as well.  They were glad that I had a program in my calculator do that, as they didn’t know how to obtain them.  The completed plan is shown on the following page.

 

                               

One project took us adjacent to and below the Ben Franklin Bridge over the Delaware River leading to Philadelphia.  The photo included here shows me holding the metal detector as Steven and I searched for property markers in 1990.  The finished plan follows.

Here is another new total station that we used at Key Engineers.

               

We had some very large projects and that was the reason we were hired, but I discovered that once they were finished, they didn’t need another surveyor at the time.  They were nice to work for, but they laid both of us off at the same time after working there one year.

I was, although upset with the circumstances of being let go from the job at Berlin, trying to find a way to continue helping support the family. 

CHAPTER  12

A new opportunity

1990-1992

One day while attending our church in Lumberton, I asked an assistant pastor (who I knew used to be a businessman) for some advice on my possibly starting my own company (with no finances available).  He referred me to an ex-partner for some advice.  So, I arranged a meeting with him which set off a series of events.

This new acquaintance told me of how he had partnered with a man who was an entrepreneur who had once been with him in a business venture but he had cost this man hundreds of thousands of dollars.  However, he was going to refer me to him anyway, thinking there might be a good opportunity for me. 

The man’s name is Francis (Frank) Scott Key; a grandson of his ancestral grandfather who wrote our national anthem.  The reason he thought this might work out for me was the fact, he said, that Mr. Key owned a lot of new surveying equipment, but had no surveyor!

I was given Mr. Key’s phone number and a meeting was set up.  He explained that he would occasionally help people start up a business. 

His current main business was selling a software program written by another partner with a PHD degree.  He also currently had another start up business in his building with a man from Switzerland.  He had expertise in precise measuring for tooling and was outfitted by Mr. Key with state of the art equipment in a glass enclosed room. 

During a time of trying to collect a large fee from his software purchased by a company in Europe that made surveying equipment, a deal was struck.  They would ship him $250,000 worth of survey equipment to complete the rest of their payment.  He accepted, knowing that his Swedish expert could find a use for some of it. 

Of all the instruments, there was one state of the art surveyor’s total station and data collector.  Being the owner of some land, he had been hiring a local company to do surveys for him.  He approached them with an offer to merge into a new company with him.  They accepted, had their men trained for the new equipment, then backed out of the deal. 

Meanwhile he had purchased a new computer, drafting table and office furniture which he was temporarily “stuck with”.  Then I came along at the right time.  We would start a new company named Argus Land Surveying.  The other company in the building was called Argus Precision Measurements.

      

  His building was a new brick office building in which I was given a furnished office, use of all the equipment, and his secretary’s help. 

We went to a car dealership, where he let me pick out a new GMC Suburban, which he paid for totally with his credit card!  He then ordered a new work box built that I designed.  His brother in law was an industrial arts instructor and he built it out of birch wood like a nice piece of furniture! 

My outfit was the envy of the other surveyors that saw it.  He also paid me a small salary to help me get by until I could build up the business.

My first employee was my son Steven again who did my drafting and helped do the surveys in the field as well.  Over the next two years, the business had grown.  I had employed a couple more employees.  Steven then chose to join the U.S. Navy, but with new workers, I carried on.  It was Frank Key that suggested Steven take an exam in Philadelphia to see if he could become a cryptologist.  Frank had worked with the Department of Defense and was familiar with this field.

Steven passed the exam, took his basic training in Orlando and Pensacola, then went on to Japan.

Before he left, we had designed the layout of the interior of an empty new building like the one that we were in.  It was just across the parking lot.  We soon moved all operations there. 

      

Our new instrument was state of the art.  It was a Zeiss Elta 3. 

     

     

  Occasionally we did surveys at the shore.  Here is a photo of the Argus vehicle and me at Barnegat Lighthouse.

     

          Here, I’m doing a property survey in Medford with the Ziess Elta 3 total station.

              

          We had a variety of jobs that we worked on.  I already had a few clients that would continue to use my services in whichever company I was in.  Most of these were doing title surveys.  When people purchased a house they would need a survey showing all the buildings and improvements in order to obtain title insurance and their mortgage.  Some would also need flood certificates that I would provide for their flood insurance, if needed.

          Some work was for Mr. Key’s properties.  Some was for an industrial building contractor he knew.  We even had a contract for a new street to be constructed at the McGuire Air Force Base. 

One of the industrial survey plans follows.

  

An example of one of my title surveys follows.  These consisted of the majority of our work.

     

CHAPTER  13

The start of Apex Surveys

1992-Present (2017)

After a couple of years Mr. Key became concerned that we were not growing quickly enough.  He also had closed Argus Precision. He was now primarily working his new day trading business with the stock markets.  He allowed me to purchase all the equipment needed to start my own business. 

The year was 1992 when I started Apex Surveys in Willingboro in my home office. 

Until 1995, we were living on Hadley Lane.  After that until present we bought our house on Meribrook Circle in Willingboro.  We had our garage remodeled into an office after using a spare bedroom for some time.  Below is my first office on Hadley Lane, also in a spare bedroom.

        

I declined the offer to purchase the 386 Computer that I had been using at Argus.  I felt the price was too high, so I used my HP 71B from then on until the Microsoft Windows computers came out.

In 1994, I purchased my first PC.  It was a Gateway running Windows 3.1.  I think it had around 500 megabites for a hard drive.  The old 386 only had four megabites, though, and it accomated me well.  So, with my new “powerful” computer and AOL. com, I was very pleased.

The cost of this computer and printer cost around $3000.  Later, as the technology advanced, the prices dropped considerably.  Since that time, I’ve used every version of Windows up to the present Windows 10.

          This first computer would do my survey calculations and plotting as well.  I preferred, however, to trace the plotting and do my own lettering freehand.

          Although most of my work was doing title surveys, I did do some Minor Subdivion work as well.

One example follows and some title plans follows that one.

           

          After Steven finished his eight years of service with the U.S. Navy, he moved back to New Jersey from Ankorage, Alaska.  The timing was perfect for me to be able to use him as a party chief, as I was beginning to get a heavy workload of surveys.

          At the same time, he acquired his art degree from Rutgers University.  After several months, he was offered a nice job working for the Navy in Lakehurst (the town in which the famed Hindenberg Blimp crashed).  Later on, he obtained a Masters Degree in logistics while still working there. 

          The following photo was taken near the shore on an old subdivision now being built up with new houses.

          Jobs here in New Jersey have taken us throughout the whole state.  From the southern end near Cape May clear to the New York border north of New York City.  The majority of the jobs are here in central Jersey. 

          There has been two incidents of people approaching us with a gun.  One was a neighbor in a rural area in the north-central part of the state.  He was concerned about us “taking land away from him” nearby where we were measuring.  He went back to his house after we explained the situation to him.

          The other incident happened here in Willing-boro.  The house had been sold and we were going to do the title survey.  As always, we rang the door bell and knocked.  There was no answer, so we started measuring the house.  While in the back yard, a man stepped out of the patio door with a handgun pointed at us and asked what we were doing.  It happened that he was a policeman who was staying at his parents’ house while they were away.  He was in bed when we came to the house.  Again, everything was explained and we continued on.

          Other problems we always face, especially in the summer, are the chigger and tick bites.  Deer ticks are worrisome due to being carriers of Lyme disease.

          A graduate engineer was helping our crew when we were working out of Medford.  He must have walked into a hanging tick nest, because he had hundreds of the tiny deer ticks all over his clothing.  He came back to the survey van and began to frantically brush his clothes.  We immediately took him back to his car so that he could go home and take a shower.  At least he didn’t get the disease.

          I get a few tick bites every year as well as chiggers.  The ticks are more dangerous, but I really hate the chiggers.  They are so uncomfortable and it takes so long to get rid of the bites.  The chiggers themselves leave soon after inflicting you, but then the itching begins.

          Over the last twenty some years I have been employed at times to survey for two farmers named Stanley Skeba and his brother Joe.  They own hundreds of acres of prime farm lands.  Over time, they have sold off parcels for subdivisions. 

Sometimes they just wanted their boundaries located.  My first job for them involved a dispute that required a lot of work. Two other companies had put in markers incorrectly and they had not found some of the important original corner markers.  I found some right away and Staney was impressed.

After the work was resolved and plotted, I prepared a display for the court to view.  After review in the courtroom, Stanley and his attorney came out and told me they settled out of court.  I have done a lot of jobs for him since including more disputes.  He also has referred me to others several times.

Following is one of the photos they took of me showing evidence of corner markers.

   

Since I was no longer working with engineers, I wasn’t doing major subdivisions, although I did  some minor subdivisions.

Most of my work was doing title surveys of small lots or acreages.  Occasionally other disputes came along for me to work on as well.

For a few months I was used by a Manhattan title insurance underwriter to provide surveys where properties had claims made for compensation.  One or more surveyors usually had disagreed on lines that caused the damage to the title of the owner requesting reimbursement for damages. My independent survey would be used to decide if they would go to court or make the payment of the claim.

It was interesting work, and I did find some problems that got worked out, but these types of surveys were not my favorite kind.

One of these surveys was being performed by Steven and myself, when walking around the house on the corner of a street, we were met by three growling dogs.  They were pit bulls running right at us when suddenly they all stopped short.  We were perplexed, but soon realized that they were halted by an invisible electric dog fence.

Folowing is a photo of one of my desks before remodeling the garage into a home office.

Some plans of a dispute involving several properties are included here next.  This involved four different properties that was being affected by the surveyor’s error.

It required a meeting with the company involved, plus research and quite a lot of field work to complete the survey.  I included color photos of the houses, as I still do today.  I haven’t seen any other surveyors including photos to date.

I wrote new legal descriptions for all of the parties concerened.  New corrective deeds were then drawn up.

     

The following photo shows Shirley assisting one of our employees, Phil Brigham, on the dispute survey shown previous.   

          Each year, I have had to attend conferences to gain the needed continuing education requirements for license renewal.  The Professional Land Surveyors Society of New Jersey have always held their annual conference at Bally’s Casino.

          Next is a photo of Shirley at the Atlantic City conference there.  She usually has gone with me over the years to my seminars, including IA, SD, NE, PA, NY, MD, and NJ.

A veiw of the Boadwalk across from Balley’s.

Here’s a photo of me taken a few years ago at my desk.

Following is shown most (but not all) of  the  certificates that I’ve earned for CEU’s for renewing my licenses.  My home state of Iowa was the first in the nation to require continuing education for professionals.  That was in 1978. 

I began going to Iowa’s annual conference at Ames with my employer’s in about 1965, well before this requirement.

          The Garden State Land Surveyors Alliance holds their annual conference at Keyport, New Jersey.  I attended there a few times.  At one of them, I put out a display of a portion of my calculator and slide rule collection.  It included a few vintage mechanical calculators as well.

           

          Atlantic City was the most intersting place for things to do for Shirley and I (although gambling was not one of them we took part in). 

At other times, we have gone to seminars at three different locations in Maryland.  We call them mini-vacations, as we always take extra time off to enjoy ourselves. So far, we have gone to only one in upstate New York.  We enjoyed our time there, as well.

My first license exam was given by the South Dakota Architects and Land Surveyors Board in Rapid City at the School of Mines.  On that trip, my whole family went, including Steven and Carol and my mother.  We visited nearby Mount Rushmore.  That was a lot of fun.

Another friend and a part time employee was John Rose, shown here helping with Shirley on a job.

Most of Shirley’s duties, though, was being the office manager, as well as doing some computer drafting.  Included are a couple of her working at one of her desks.

          Below is another view of the office.

  

          Shirley seemingly happy here, even at an old temporary desk.

My assistant, Brian Murphy, has been with the company for the last decade.  He advanced to being a party chief and when the 2008 recession came, he was the only one to remain with me.  Since then, we have worked together as a crew.  Now, I am his assistant when it comes to field work.  Mainly, I just hold the prism pole for him.  We share in the computer drafting, using email frequently.

Here we are working with our new Topcon instrument a few years ago.

        

                       

          Brian is working at a lagoon on the Jersey Shore in the second photo.

We are now using a Nikon instrument that will measure with or without a prism reflector.

                               

                            

            Recently I purchased an HP stand-alone computer.  The picture below shows the transfering of data from my old laptop to the new desktop

    Following are just a few of the  thousands of plans  that I’ve drawn over the years.  The first one is of  the property where I attended  church.             

         

Here is a plan of a property here in Willingboro.  I east breakfast most days at the McDonald’s at the corner of Garfield Drive.

         

Some days in my career have been difficult, as in anybody’s I presume.  But I feel fortunate that I found what I enjoy doing, even past the usual retirement age.  I hope to add at least another decade to my resume in the future. 

I’ve always been thankful that as we moved around the country, Shirley, Steven and Carol were understanding, and like me, considered the moves challenges and adventures.