It works like this.

Saturday, April 01, 2000

It works like this.

Russ Graves drives the truck pulling the trailer and Dave Engelkes rides shotgun.

The race down a country road, stirring up a cloud of dust in their wake. When they reach an intersection, they stop and jump out.

Graves goes into the trailer, while Engelkes trots around back and opens a rear door.

Then, Engelkes pulls out a long green-painted metal pole, while Graves bolts two 9-inch by 42-inch signs together.

When Graves finishes, Engelkes hands him the metal pole and the signs slip on top and are fastened into place.

Then, Engelkes takes the creation – now officially a "corner marker" – and walks to an anchor post embedded in the ground, puts the corner marker into its metal sleeve, fastens bolts to hold it into place, checks to see that it is pointed in the right direction and trots back to the trailer.

While Engelkes shuts the trailer door, Graves moves into the pickup truck’s driver’s seat. Soon, Engelkes jumps in the passenger side and Graves starts the engine.

The truck and trailer gain speed and race down the township road to another intersection.

At the most, five minutes elapses at every stop.

When you’re responsible for the most important part of Mower County’s first-ever rural mapping and addressing program, it’s serious business.

Sheriff’s deputies, volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians are counting on the new mapping and addressing system to get them to the scene of emergencies in the shortest possible time and so are the victims of those emergencies.

It doesn’t matter that for seemingly eons, people who have lived in rural areas have found their way home and watched their own transportation network of gravel roads and blacktop highways serve their needs and a rural route mailing address suffice, it was a system with holes.

Thus, the Mower County Board of Commissioners approved County Sheriff Barry J. Simonson’s recommendations to implement a new mapping and addressing program for rural areas.

Now, every road in all 20 townships has a street or avenue designation. Soon, every residence will have a designated number.

New maps showing the Global Positioning System plotted addresses will be used by sheriff’s deputies, firefighters and ambulance attendants and others.

Hopefully, nobody will get lost in the countryside.

Sign-Up Ltd. of Webster City, Iowa received a contract to provide the signage for Mower County.

Larry Haren, owner of the firm, sent a four-member crew, Graves and Engelkes, plus two others to Mower County to bring the county into the 21st century and they have done a fine job.

Friday, they put up the last of 997 corner markers at rural intersections.

Most have numerical designations except for "State Line Street" signs separating Minnesota and Iowa.

It took Sign-Up Ltd. only 3 1/2 weeks to erect the street and avenue signs.

"We started in the far northwest corner of the county and worked our way east across Mower County and back again," said Graves.

Back and forth through the four tiers of townships Graves and Engelkes went. "A preliminary survey determined the northeast corner of an intersection was the preferred location for the signs," Graves said, while at work in the trailer on the next sign to go up Thursday afternoon (March 30) in Adams Township.

"There have been virtually no problems whatsover," Graves said. "We had a little rain once in awhile, but we got the job done."

"The people have been very cooperative," Graves said. "They will stop and ask questions about what we’re doing, because they’re curious. This is something different in the countryside."

This week, the Sign-Up Ltd. crew turns its attention to the 3,500 residences signs. They will go up in the county right-of-way. "We will work with the people whenever we can," said Graves. "We’ll try to put them out of way whenever we can, according to our instructions."

Sign-Up Ltd. sends crews throughout the Upper Midwest in Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, South Dakota and Minnesota. More and more counties everywhere are switching to a mapping and addressing system of their own. "Some will do only streets and avenues at one time," said Graves. "Some, like Mower County, will do both. For the most part, they are choosing numbers instead of names, but you will still see several counties use historical names where it means something."

Last year, Sign-Up Ltd. did a signage project in Dodge County and before that, LeSeuer County.

The Webster City, Iowa firm has also sent crews to Minnesota’s far north country in Lake of the Woods County.

In Mower County, Graves and Engelkes work in tandem. Each has their specific duties and goes about them in a no-nonsense style.

When Engelkes isn’t hefting 30-pound corner markers from the trailer to the anchor pole in a roadside ditch for a living, he is a bull rider on the rodeo circuit.

And just like another kind of cowboy, Glen Campbell, once sang about the "lineman of the county," so, too, are Graves and Engelkes, the sign men of the county, actually kind-of-cowboys roaming today’s heartland prairies.

They ride the rural roads, creating clouds of dust that silently announce their presence.

They work alone most of the time. Just Mother Nature and them.

They work from sunup to sundown, always burning daylight to get the job done.

"I’ve worked for Larry Haren and Sign-Up for a long time," said Graves. "After a few years, I decided I missing out on my children growing up so I quit and tried something else."

"Then, I came back and I’ve been doing it ever since," said Graves. "I like what I do. It’s interesting work and important to the people we serve. It’s all about public safety and counties everywhere are paying more and more attention to that every day."