In my brief spell as a dead-keen boy scout in the short-lived 1st Harrismith troop, I found out that to be a good patrol leader you need a good ‘thy rod and thy staff.’ A hiking staff.
It needed to be good strong wood, not too thick not too thin, and its length should be from the ground to the bottom of your nostrils. You with your hiking boots on.
And I found the perfect staff where I found lots of fascinating treasure over the years: In the workshop were two very long wooden poles, not perfectly round, about an inch in diameter, marked with thin shallow sawblade cuts roughly an inch apart for the full length. Some of the cuts had numbers punched next to them.
I chose the stronger one and sawed it to exactly the prescribed nostril-to-ground length.
Perfect: My hiking staff – made from Annie’s Caltex with Boron underground fueltank dipstick! I had watched Annie’s petrol attendants remove the iron manhole cover on the forecourt, unscrew the lid to the tank, lower the long dipstick, raise it, note the wet Caltex with Boron mark and how many litres that meant, then take it into the office for Annie to reconcile that amount with the pump readings. No software required.
The dipstick got retired – maybe when software took over, dunno when? Then around 1970 I launched it on its new career in the Great Outdoors.
In 2022 it went into storage in the Lodder’s garage in Hilton KZN, where I hope to retrieve it some day when they get back from the USA.
Maybe we’ll go hiking together again, me and my rod and my staff … and the Lodders!
~~o0o~~
Vrystaat Confessions 
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