Saturday's story about dowsing for graves brought back some memories.

Way back in the day, my college years, that is, a buddy of mine used to work for a surveyor who swore by the dowsing method described in Connie Jo Discoe's story on the front page.

In case you missed it, the practitioner uses a couple of rods, in this case, copper, with a 90-degree angle bent in them, held in the hand.

My buddy's boss used the rods to find the cornerstones.

He used a couple of lengths of coat-hanger wire, with a 90-degree length for handles and a couple of short bent angles on the other ends.

Objects, whether wood, metal or leather, have some sort of "aura," the surveyor said.

Of course, we had to try it on ourselves, and sure enough, it seemed to work.

Throw an object on the ground, walk over it, and sure enough, the rods crossed.

But after studying it for a while, I decided something other than an "aura" was at work.

I found that when I held the rods perfectly parallel, they would hang straight ahead. When I wanted them to cross or swing apart, all it took was a subtle twist of the wrist.

No, I couldn't argue with the surveyor's success in finding corner points, and I don't think he was pulling a fast one on his gullible young employee.

I just concluded that he was subconsciously crossing the wires where he decided the corner stake should be buried.

I think I even drilled a couple of parallel holes in a board and stuck the divining wires in them to try out my theory. The rods, as I remember it, just swung in the breeze.

Don't you hate a spoilsport?

I do have some batteries ready to put in my metal detector, though.

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McCook attracts visitors to its historic sites, golf courses, lakes and hunting areas.

But maybe tourism officials have been ignoring an untapped resource.

According to the Roanoke (Va.) Times, a McCook motel was the site of an impromptu storm-chaser convention on Sunday.

A call to the Chief Motel this morning confirmed that it did have a group of the rough-weather fans on hand over the weekend.

According to the story 12 members of a Southwest Virginia stormchaser team and 18 stormchasers from Mississippi State University all converged on the McCook motel at once.

The Southwest Virginia team was drawn to Southwest Nebraska by the memory of a powerful tornado in Harlan County on May 22, 2004.

The Mississippi State team did see a weak tornado near North Platte last Tuesday.

You can read the complete story at http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke%5C24173.html

I can see the travel slogan now: "Twister the Night Away in Southwest Nebraska."