THE SUMMER JOB FROM HELL 1967 – 1968

I will kick off the New Year 2022, with a flashback to my time after High School, in the summers of 1968 and 1969. My post today, could be categorized as a “memory”, but I have chosen to consider it an “opinion”. I do so because, each and every one of us, has had “the summer job from hell” in our past. Although, I am sure many of you will see my job as “not that bad”, I can guarantee you, that, to me, it was a living nightmare. As this memory flits past, in the open chasm of my mind, I grab it and slap it down on paper. At this age, the memories that you don’t grab onto, pass by, and are forever lost. Once I have put this fleeting vision on paper, I will return too, writing about, our days in Scotland.

It just so happened in my first year of college, I had the grand misfortune of securing summer employment with a Land Surveyor from my hometown of RD in Alberta. At first I was excited, because working with a surveyor was considered a “cherry job”, by my peers. The pay was big, I believe I was in the”‘heady” range of $6.00/hour. That pay was four times the minimum wage, of the time. I had visions of rolling in money all winter long, from my summer savings. Those of you that know me, already understand that I was unlikely to “save”, even one dollar of my pay. It seemed that each time I got paid, something would come up that I just couldn’t live without, and all my money would disappear. I would then make promises to start saving the next week. Amazing, but that practise, held true, for the rest of my life.

My first day was memorable. After meeting the surveyor, I’ll call him Davy, because he dressed and looked like Davy Crockett, we piled into his truck and headed for the bush. I have a coworker, Lefty, who is a square built farm boy. He just dripped muscles. As for myself, I was a solid 6’2″, one hundred and forty pounder. It seemed that I had to stand in the same spot twice, to make even a reasonable shadow. Off we went, headed northwest from RD into the bush. We were to be gone for a week, so it was kinda like an adventure. My spirits were high. We were getting paid to ride along in the surveyors truck. I could have ridden all summer. Well, after a long day, we arrive at a point farther north, than I ever imagined, existed. My spirits were still high, after all, I had just bagged a cool $50.00 for riding in a truck.

We check into a motel, in a small town, north and west of Edmonton. We unload the gear into one room. Here is where I learned my first surveyor lesson. As I hopped up into the bed of his truck, I made a reach for the only thing with a handle on it. I thought I would start with the easy stuff first. My hand was an inch away from grabbing it, when Davy, shrieks out, “STOP, DON’T YOU EVER TOUCH MY SURVEY INSTRUMENT!!” Geezus, I damn near soiled myself. That was my first introduction to the cursed “theodolite”, the focus of my hatred for the rest of the summer. I am frozen in space, and Davy, now says, “only I, and I alone, am allowed to touch this valuable instrument. Do you have any idea how much it costs,” he adds? Well I didn’t, and truthfully didn’t give a grap either. From that moment on, he alone, loaded, unloaded, transported and operated this instrument.

Unloaded, he now advises us, to get some sleep, as the next day would be intense. Of course, we thought, “well he’s an old man, what would he possibly know about young people and how much rest we need”. True enough, he was old. I believe that he was around 35 at that time. Well it seemed old to us. Luckily, there was nothing in this town, to keep us awake and partying, anyway. There was one restaurant where we ate. To me it was like I had arrived! No more home cooking for me! I was now a traveller and only ate in the best of establishments. While the sun was still up, we went to bed. I might add here, that me being in bed before the sun went down, had not happened often in my short life. I was completely unaware of what awaited us in the morning, so, I slept the sleep of the innocent.

At 6:00 AM, this fool Davy is pounding on our door and begging us, “to please get up, if it suited us”, not! Breakfast was heavenly, in my later years I came to know this breakfast as “heart attack on a plate”. Now fully “greased up” by the breakfast,and loaded with a bagged lunch prepared by the restaurant, no more making my own bag lunch, we piled back in the truck and headed out. We left the main road and took a series of side roads, each rougher and smaller than the last, until we came to the end. I might add here, that I was significantly lost by now. Had he booted me out now, it would have taken me all summer to find civilization. I didn’t even know which way was “up”. There we were, faced with a wall of forest, the likes of which, I had only ever heard of. I am not sure what I thought, exactly, but do know that I was slightly puzzled, as to what we were doing there.

Now ol’ Davy is visibly excited. He is bopping around like a little kid at the fair. Lefty and I are exchanging looks. Maybe he is demented and brought us all the way out here just to “abuse” us. Here we are, standing in the obvious “armpit” of the whole world, horseflies and mosquitos, trying to take chunks out of us, and this fool is about to wet himself with pleasure. Instantly, I can see that there is absolutely nothing good about this place. Funny thing was, we were standing in the best place, that we would see all week. We just didn’t know that yet. Within 5 minutes, I have developed a lifelong hate for horseflies and mosquitos. “Well”, I’m thinking, “let’s get this show on the road, how bad could it be?” Ol’ Davy seemed quite excited”.

We unload all of the equipment and pile it on the ground. Davy, now shows the order in which everything must be laid out before starting our work each day. I’m like, “ok, whatever, he’s paying the bills. If he wants it unloaded and piled like that, who cares? I’ll pile it anyway he likes”. He now opens a big ass wooden chest, which I must admit I was slightly curious about. Out of this, he pulls one, godawful, big roll of metal tape. It weighs about 30 pounds, but would soon weigh more like 100, as we got more familiar with it. He then unwraps two of the biggest machetes, you have ever seen. These, he says proudly, “will become you best friends”. Then out comes a couple of hatchets, an ax, three ponchos, a bag full of square metal rods, about 6 feet long, a stovepipe thing with handles on it, a three piece (9′) wood and metal measuring stick, plastic ribbon, some plum-bobs and finally a big bag full of bug repellant.

immediately, he grabs the repellant and lathers every spot of exposed skin on his body. He then tosses it to us and suggests that we do the same. Well, in the few minutes that we had been there, I was already half crazy from the bugs. I had slapped about a thousand by this time and breathed in a few hundred more. They were in my ears, eyes, nose, mouth and anyplace else they could find access to. Suddenly, I’m feeling a little uneasy about this job and vaguely wondering, just what I had got myself into this time. I grab a tube of bug juice and paint myself white with it. Oh well, I’m here now, we might as well get it over with. It started then and lasted for three long, agonizing months, before I bolted and ran back to school.

Davy, by this time has his beloved survey instrument, mounted on a wooden tripod and slung over his back, like Huckleberry Finn, off for a hike. He has selected a small hatchet, picked up the chainsaw and looks quite comfortable. He then says, “you guys gather up the rest of the stuff and let’s get started.” Lefty, just waded in and loaded about 70% of everything else in his arms. He also looks quite comfortable. I picked up the rest of the rubble and feel much like a pack horse might feel, on his way to the Klondike Gold rush. We walk a few feet, Davy scratches around a bit in the ground and soon sets up his instrument over something he has found at the edge of the bush. He peers thru his instrument and locates something a few hundred yards away that has been previously marked with tape.

Still peering thru the evil survey instrument, he turns 90 degrees and locks his machine in place. He then gets Lefty to take a chunk of orange ribbon from the supplies and tie it to a tree at the edge of the forest. He tells me to take another one and go in a bit deeper. “Is he crazy,” I’m thinking. I’m not going in there!” But I do. Davy, now gives us our instructions. He explains, pointing down the line made by our two pieces of ribbon, that we are going into the bush about two miles. We will layout the site of an oil lease that some drilling company wants to start work on. I look at the impenetrable wall of forest in front of us. I give Lefty, the “he’s kidding, right?”, look. He is just staring back, blankly.

Davy, further explains that we will chop a straight line thru the bush and he will direct us as we go. We plunge in. I attack the first twig with a machete, “whack, bam, crack, whoosh”, down goes the first branch of the millions I cut that summer. Lefty and I thrash away, chopping, hacking, grunting and snorting. Sweat is flying, bugs are biting and I am cursing. Whew, after a few minutes we stop to survey our handy work. Well I must say, we had cut down about 20 feet of brush. Geezus, I thought, only another 10,550 feet to our goal. I was ready for a break, but our leader, who is very fresh, looking in at us through his machine, reckons that we will stop after we hit the first legal survey monument in 1/2 mile.

I would like to say that sometime in that first day or so, I had an epiphany about school work and education. Very early on I realized that if you wanted to be on the other end of the survey instrument, you had better study hard. Otherwise you were going to be “cutting line” the rest of your life. That first part of day one, was right out of a prisoner of war story, in the jungle. I was hot, dirty, had bites where I didn’t even know that I had places. In addition I had bleeding scratches on every piece of exposed skin. My back ached, my arms felt dead, my legs were shaking and all I wanted to do was lie down, and have it over with. Finally after a couple of hours, which seemed like 12 hours, we stopped for a break.

At this point, I might break in and explain the process of cutting line. We hacked, chopped and cut down anything in our path, under 3 inches in diameter. Bigger than that, Davy would wade in with his chain saw, give it a crank and “wwwaaahhhh”, cut down anything in our path. His cutting lasted about 3 seconds. He would then wipe his saw with a rag, and walk back to his station behind the theodolite. As a side benefit of cutting line, we were also tasked with measuring, how far we had cut. It started from the monument, Davy had set his instrument over, and continued in three hundred foot increments. A each point we put a spike in the ground, with some orange tape on it, to mark our path. Couldn’t be this easy? Right? And it was not.

Well, we finally found out what the metal tape was for. It was a godawful big tape measure, 300 feet long. The very essence of surveying was, to measure to some point on a map, starting from a legal survey monument. These monuments were placed by Land Surveyors, every half mile East and West; as well as every half mile North and South, essentially marking off quarter sections. This survey was started, in the late 1800’s at the southeast corner the province and was laid out in a grid fashion over the whole province. So all we had to do was find a monument that could be verified as correct and measure 2 miles in, 300 feet at a time. Yeah right! There was only one thing that could interfere with this plan. Yup you guessed it. The terrain.

Within 150 feet of where we first entered the jungle, we had climbed a hill, went thru a creek, and then, up and over many mounds, hummocks or piles of soil. All of these made it impossible to measure a 300 foot line. So whatcha do? Chop the measurement into little short distances where you could measure in a straight line. Sometimes this meant measuring pieces as short as 10 feet between points. The measuring chain or tape had to be perfectly level when measuring. That is where the big (3 piece) stick came in. It was a hateful job. Each measurement had to be “chained” or measured and then “check chained” no matter how painful.

The Land Surveyor was unrelenting in his commitment to accuracy. Not once, in all my time with him, did we get away with one measurement. Not only that, any “check chain” that was more than 0.5mm different, then necessitated a third measurement. I kinda forget, but I think we were allowed to be out a total of 1/4 of an inch, in measurement, over one half mile. Geezus! If at the end of this half mile, when another monument was found, the surveyor added up all of the measurements we had taken, and if there was a difference from his legal survey map, then we started over again and measured the whole distance again. Thru swamps, over hills, down cliffs, thru creeks, mounds, hummocks and bugs, we did it over. I learned many new and pleasant words from Lefty, when I caused him to have to remeasure. It was always my fault, because he was stronger and meaner than me.

All the time as we sweated, cursed and suffered, that theodolite, on its three legs peaked out at us. I could see Davy standing out behind it, every once in a while, whispering to it. He would lovingly caress it and then bark out some order to us. Over hill and dale we struggled, our equipment strapped on and banging around. Blisters grew on my hands and feet, I was hot dirty, thirsty and wanting my mommy. There was no respite, we struggled along all day at a snail’s pace. Lunch break meant collapsing in a pile on top of everything I was carrying. I then shared a sandwich with the hoards of bugs that also took their lunch break. Our leader comes bopping in, in high spirits and announces that we have made reasonable progress, for our first day. He adds, you will get better as time goes along. I am broken.

Finally comes the end of a long day. We have not yet reached our goal, however we have cut a line thru an impenetrable forest, much farther than I ever planned to cut, in my whole life. I am beat and look like I have been beaten up by a grizzly bear. I no longer weigh 140 pounds. I suspect I have lost about 10 pounds during the day. I am slumped on the ground, waiting for our airlift to come and get me out of here. Davy, still fresh after his stroll thru the woods, is setting calmly and scratching notes into his survey book. His trusted survey instrument is resting on its tripod, and its lone, accusing eye is looking right at me. I didn’t even have enough left to curse at it.

I understand that this has been a long and probably, boring post. However, I just had to get this fleeting memory on paper. If you were to read this post over and over, it would basically show you what my summer looked like. Each day was the same. Unload the truck, find a line, strap on our tools and plunge into the bush. Most usually we plunged into the dirtiest, ugliest most gnarly part, of an impenetrable jungle, our leader could find. One last vision I might add, is that no matter how far, tough or deep we got into the forest each day. At the end of the day, we had to load our weary bodies with all of the tools, and drag our asses back to the truck. If the job was not done in one day, then the next morning we unloaded and carried everything back in, to where we ended, and then started from there.

That is it, once again I am spent. I am sure that many of you had your own, personal, jobs from hell. I would love to hear about them. The one lasting thing I took from this work was; never ever be on the bottom of the pile. Do whatever you need to claw and scratch your way towards the top. Or simply, it is much better to be the surveyor, than to be the surveyors slave. And that was only one day! It just went on and on. I was either, hot, sweaty, wet, dirty, tired, sunburned, frozen and always pissed. In my opinion, this was the worst summer job EVER!