Blame it on Rod
Long before Carolyn Gleason, former Sandpoint Citizen of the Year, and owner of Second Avenue Pizza and founder of LOST IN THE FIFTIES in Sandpoint, Idaho; brought hundreds of cool cars to Sandpoint every May there were “Rods”.
I definitely need to get some surveyors in Sandpoint to comment on when is a survey most important, what will it accomplish for the landowner, how long will it take, is it guaranteed, and how much can you expect to pay. I just had a guy walk into the office today and he had found a bearing marker on a tree that mentioned chains and rods. I was happy to explain every boring detail and will give you just a line or two.
In fact rods arrived long before Lost in the 50’s and well before American metal cars. Realtors (and especially those at Rainbow Realty) are trained to know that the rod is a unit of length, equal to 5.5 yards, 11 cubits, 5.0292 metres, 16.5 feet or 1/320 of a statute mile. A rod (not the major league baseball player) is the same length as a perch (not the ones I’ve caught fishing in Lake Pend Oreille) and a pole. A perch is one rod and a chain is four rods. This was standardized 400 years ago in 1607 by Edmund Gunter.
In the episode of The Simpsons called ‘A Star Is Burns’, Grandpa Simpson says: “My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that’s the way I likes it!” That equals 504 gallons per mile, or about 1.2 litres per metre! In normal units for this purpose it is 0.00198 miles per US gallon (or about 10.48 feet per gallon). Oh yeah, and a hogshead was a cask of wine (about 63 gallons) and a hogshead of beer or ale is 54 gallons. Pretty much about the same amount the writers of the Simpsons must of had to even come up with that particular line.
If all this sounds like something from the hit 1960’s television show, The Twilight Zone; blame it on the Rod! (Rod Serling).
