November 8, 1942

Thanks for the buck.

C. P. S. #23
Coshocton, Ohio
Nov. 8 1942

Dear fambly,

Here it is Sun night and I havn’t written to youns yet. I’ve been sort of busy this week. We got our printing press to going and had a couple of big jobs and there are only two of us that know very much about it. After some of the others learn more about printing I wont have to work so much. The jobs were the cover of Seed and some programs for a play that some of the fellows gave here last night. Wait till you see the Seed cover, its a two color job done with linolium blocks. The cover of the play program is made with the same process, they just carve the picture in some linolium and mount it on a block of wood and print it on the perss. The play was “Brother Orchid” and our artist drew a picture of an orchid and carved out a block.

There has been a wave of practical jokes going through camp since Hallowe’en. They have been fixing a dummy in the bed of some unsuspecting fellow that is coming back from furlough and the telling him that a visitor came in and they have him this fellows bed not thinking he’d get back so soon. So far the fellow they have pulled it on will always hunt up an empty bed and sleep in it the first night then they try to get him to wake up the dummy. Sometimes it lasts till noon before the victum gets wise. The last guy that got sucked in said he was convinced that anything could happen in CPS.

My work has been extra interesting this last week. I have been riding around the country a lot, we are checking the streem gauging stations. The last issue of Seed that you got had a short article about stream gauging and a picture of a gauging station. I guess I’ll have to draw a picture of what I was doing. There were three of us in the crew we spent most of uor time riding around. I’ll draw the picture on the back.

The elevation here is between ten and eleven hundred feet. There is a lookout tower that is on a high spot at 1250 ft. That is probably the reason that it is so chilly, also I have one of the coldest jobs, but I like it. I have had a slight cold since I have been on surveying but I am over it now and enjoy good health. I do well if I get over 7 hours of sleep and seem to get by with it. Letter writing and reading and Printing keep me pretty busy.

It does seem like you’ve been having bum luck, but I think there are lots of people in the same boat. I’ll try and console you a little by saying that if you don’t get everything done you’ll never know it a hundred years from now.

[illustration of stream gauge with a well house, outside gauge , intake pipe and a bridge for gaging when water is deep and a note:]

Called a Wier. It is a dam with a notch that is measured so that they know how much water flows through at a given depth. The notch enables them to accurately measure the depth. The intake pipe that goes into the well house keeps the water within at the same level and it is measured all the time with a recording gauge that runs with a clock. That outside gauge is a check on the other one. What we surveyor do is check the gauges to see if they line up and regulate(?) right. We do this with a level (that one with a telescope on it) The dam and water level readings establish the width and height and the gaging which take place during a storm establishes the velocity which corresponds to the third dimension (?) and enables thus to figure the volume of water that leaves this part of the country. The velocity changes with the change of height of water so we have to get velocity reading at several different heights. That picture in the Oct. issue of Seed is of a cable car that they use if the water gets too deep for the bridge. They really have some good floods here they say when it gets raining. Wish we’d get some good rains, I’d like to try out my new raincoat.

Yours,
Bernard