One blue cold winter day, we were working on a Forest Service project, north of Poplar Bluff, Missouri. We were traversing with a four man crew, using fixed tripods. This consists of an instrument man, foresight and backsight men, and one poor sap out front clearing the traverse line. When an angle set is completed, the backsight man pulls his tripod and brings it to the instrument man. The instrument man leaves his tripod in place and carries his instrument and the backsight tripod up the cleared line to the foresight man. The foresight man carries the extra tripod on up the line and sets it on the next point, so a new angle set can be completed. Somewhat boring and repetitive work, but on this day, we were provided with a hilarious situation.
*Jack was up front clearing the traverse line, *Bob was at the foresight tripod, I was running the instrument, and *Eddie was the tail-end backsight guy.
In the late afternoon, Eddie brought his tripod up to me. I noticed that he had taken off the top part of his coveralls and tied the "arms" around his waist so he could keep wearing the "bottoms". This struck me as being very strange. Did I mention that it was an old "blue" cold day? Overcast, kinda damp and just the kind of day where the cold penetrates all the way to your bones. And Eddie was in his shirt sleeves??
I said "Hey Eddie, are you hot? Man it's cold out here. You need to get your coveralls on."
Eddie: I can't.
Me: Well why not?!
Eddie: (with a sheepish look) Ummm. I had to take a dump awhile ago and I didn't get my coveralls out of the way, and I pooped in the sleeve. I didn't notice it and started to put them back on... Then I realized...
Me: Oh my! That's bad.... Wow! (all this is said while trying to refrain from bursting out laughing!) Well, we're almost through for the day and we'll be back to the truck pretty soon.
I grabbed Eddie's tripod, shouldered up the rest of my equipment and almost ran up to the foresight. When I arrived, somewhat out of breath, I said "Bob! Bob! you gotta hear this!" When I related the story to him, we both literally were rolling around on the ground laughing! Of course we felt sorry for Eddie but if this would have happened to us, we would have been laughing at ourselves!
But Eddie got the last laugh...
When we got back to the vehicle at the end of the day, Eddie just threw his soiled coveralls into the back of the old Jeep Cherokee, along with all of the other equipment.
And as we started back toward West Plains; the engine started heating up... the heater started warming up... and a horrible smell started permeating the confines of the ole Jeep!
Of course we knew right off what the source was. So we stopped alongside the highway, used some old wire flags and survey flagging to tie Eddie's coveralls to the top rack of the Jeep and then continued on our way!
This whole incident brings to mind an old adage "Some days you're the statue and some days you're the pigeon" and that day wasn't Eddie's day!!
*Unless you were there, you'll never know if these are the actual names or not!
*Unless you were there, you'll never know if these are the actual names or not!
