Arbitrary borders: what happens when they're in the wrong place?

[KBCraig]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46832892/ns/us_news-life/t/nc-sc-state-line-isnt-where-folks-thought-it-was/

LAKE WYLIE, S.C. — Relatively small errors by surveyors using stakes, hatchets and mental arithmetic 240 years ago could mean the end of Victor Boulware's tiny convenience store.

For decades, officials thought the land where the store sits was in South Carolina, because maps said the boundary with North Carolina drawn back in the 1700s was just to the north.

But modern-day surveyors, using computers and GPS systems, redrew the border to narrow it down to the centimeter. Their results put the new line about 150 feet south of the old one and placed Boulware's Lake Wylie Minimarket in North Carolina, where the gas prices are 30 cents higher and the fireworks that boost his bottom line are illegal.

"If I end up across the line, it is going to shut this business down," Boulware said.

. . . for the owners of 93 properties who suddenly find themselves in another state, it's a bureaucratic nightmare. The state line determines so much in their lives — what schools they go to, what area code their phone number starts with even who provides them gas and electricity. Small utility cooperatives in South Carolina are banned from extending services across the state line. Most of the properties in question are near Charlotte, N.C.

"I'm having a hard time being funny about this when mysterious forces bigger than you are shoving you around," said Frederick Berlinger, who suddenly has been told that he goes to bed at night in Spartanburg County, S.C. after 15 years in what he thought was Polk County, N.C.

[Silent_Bob]

93 properties... They could secede.

[Lloyd Danforth]

Minimum they should get back years of taxes from the town, county and state that used to claim them as subjects and then negotiate with the new bureaucrats.

[Russell Kanning]

exactly

[WithoutAPaddle]

There was a hurricane in 1938 that wreaked so much havoc around Lake Winnipesauke that, to this day, it is impossible to precisely determine property borders there because so many deed perimeters were referenced to things that got moved.

[Free libertarian]

93 properties... They could secede.

okay, I'm down....how 'bout we call it erm "Free Grafton"  ?

[KBCraig]

When talking about borders and immigration with people who are fixated on arbitrary lines on a map, and "illegal", I always ask what makes crossing the Rio Grand different from crossing the Red River, or crossing from Juarez to El Paso different from crossing from Texarkana Texas to Texarkana Arkansas, or from Bristol Tennessee to Bristol Virginia.

"That's totally different! The river is a natural border, but State Line Avenue is just a street!"

And that's when I tell them about Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec. 

Increased enforcement has managed to fuck up that perfectly nice little bi-national community, where nobody used to give any more thought to which country they lived in, than TX/AR or TN/VA residents give in their bi-state cities. Now it's more like the line that used to divide East from West in Germany.

[Tom Sawyer]

When talking about borders and immigration with people who are fixated on arbitrary lines on a map, and "illegal", I always ask what makes crossing the Rio Grand different from crossing the Red River, or crossing from Juarez to El Paso different from crossing from Texarkana Texas to Texarkana Arkansas, or from Bristol Tennessee to Bristol Virginia.

"That's totally different! The river is a natural border, but State Line Avenue is just a street!"

And that's when I tell them about Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec. 

Increased enforcement has managed to fuck up that perfectly nice little bi-national community, where nobody used to give any more thought to which country they lived in, than TX/AR or TN/VA residents give in their bi-state cities. Now it's more like the line that used to divide East from West in Germany.

That's why we need a wall! to keep those damn polite Canadians from sending their actors and hockey players over here and takin' all our jobs!

or

"Mr. Obama, tear down this wall!"

[WithoutAPaddle]

54° 40' or fight!

...we need a wall! to keep those damn polite Canadians from sending their actors and hockey players over here and takin' all our jobs!

I can spot 'em in a second.  They say, "fre-quen'-ted" and "for-mid'-i-ble"

Well, some of them do, whereas my late grandmother, Yvonne Labelle, who emigrated from Montreal to Summerswert, used to say things like, "Me, I live on toppa da hill, half way down."

or

"Mr. Obama, tear down this wall!"

Last year I got to know a German grad student who was attending the University of Maryland to further his study of political science.  I showed him the youtube clip of Reagan saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" and asked him if he was familiar with it and he said, yes, he has seen it many times on Fox News since he has been in this country, but had hardly ever seen it in Germany.  I told him that lots of people in this country think that the decision to tear down that wall was influenced by Reagan's exhortation and he said, "You're kidding, right?"

[Russell Kanning]

hahaha
btw I wonder how tall the walls around the white house are now

[WithoutAPaddle]

http://www.dwmorrison.com/sotb.htm

[Tom Sawyer]

For hours us kids could hardly contain the anticipation of buying FIREWORKS!

[Russell Kanning]

as we drive across the country   ... I cant believe all of those fireworks places stay in business
before the 4th there were tent fireworks stands at every exit in Kansas