So-Hi Estates & The Origins of "Heffer Dust!"

 November 6, 2025

   A couple more surveyor stories. If you've ever driven on I-40 east of Blake Ranch Turnoff and you actually made it to Ashfork, you can thank me and my rear chainman skills. And, if you have ever used this term, below, in conversation, you can also thank me, and Ralph Tisdale.

The Doper Roper: "Heffer Dust!"

   Yes, in the summers of 1967-'68, home from college, I worked on Arizona Highway Department survey crews "blue-topping" the grade near Blake Ranch Turnoff, east of Kingman. We established grade all the way to upper Knight Creek.

   In 1970 I moved to Phoenix and got on at APS working a survey crew that was tasked with locating J-boxes and transformers for new housing development. One of our crew chiefs was an old, crusty cowboy named Ralph Tisdale and his favorite swearing substitute was "Heiffer Dust" which I borrowed—and mangled—for my comic strip character The Doper Roper which ran in the Razz Revue from 1972-1976.

The Doper Roper:

"Crazy Hippies On Crazycrack Mountain"

   During my surveyor period, I also worked on laying out the lots at So-Hi Estates outside of Kingman where my father retired to in the nineties.

Thomas Charles at So-Hi Estates

(that's Castle Rock at the upper left)

"The opinion others have of you is their problem, not yours."

—Old Vaquero Saying