Through out the spring of 1978 I drove a rural school bus route in the morning and afternoon. Sometimes I drove a kindergarten route at noon. While this was going on I took a couple classes at the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater. One of the kids on my bus had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). He was about nine years old. But in those days you never heard it called that. Those were the days before you heard a lot about the medications Ritalin and Prozac. I had to deal with the kid the best I could. One day he just grabbed another kid's books and slung them out the open window as we rolled down the road at 55 miles per hour. I sent a couple of the other kids back to get them. This little nine year old kid's dad would shave his head because he so tormented the other kids they would often grab at his hair to fend him off. What a mess. He is probably a state legislator now. 

   For a while I drove the same route I had rode on when I was in school.  Because it was only three years later, some of the kids were still riding - they were just more grown up.  It was strange to now be their bus driver.  Also, in those days the drinking age was 18 years old so the older kids carried themselves more like adults. Some times I could get one of them to help me watch the little guy that had (ADHD).  They always never wanted me to worry about asking them to do that above-the-call-of-duty task.  I felt bad because I don't think I would have done something like that when I was riding the bus. 

   In the summer I worked around the shop. The bus company also sold buses and they did warranty work and painting of buses as well. Sam lived across the street and did a variety of jobs at the bus company. He had been in the Army Air Corp during World War II, then in the Air Force during the Korean War, and finally in Vietnam as well. Sam had a dog named Charlie. One day the big garbage truck ran over Charlie. Charlie was only wounded. From that day forward, when the garbage truck got five miles away, Charlie the dog started to go nuts in anticipation of its arrival. If you where standing at the shop work bench, a hand or tool would often come out from under a bus and hit your ankle. It was Sam demanding in experlatives a nine-sixteens wrench or some other tool. Charlie the dog would be near by standing on his three good legs growling at you by then. 

   One day I had to fill in for a young and pretty woman kindergarten bus driver at the last minute. I was covered with grease and my hair stuck out from under my hat like Ted Nugent. I remember this little kid coming up to the door of the bus as I stopped to pick him up. He looked at me and screamed and ran back to his mom on the porch. She just waved me on. Another time a driver did not show up and I had to pick up a load of kindergarten kids at school and take them home. As I ran out the door to get the bus ready, Jack the personnel guy said, "Just ask the kids where the first stop is." When I got the kids to the right neighborhood I asked the little kid in the front seat where the first house was and he sang a little song as he said, "go right, then left, then right, then left, then stop, then left, then left....." He said all this as he bounced his head gently off the window each time he said a direction. 

   I remember there was a lot of alcohol consumed after work in those days by all the players around the shop. 

   This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Army Private First Class Sean Schneider, 22, who died when his convoy was hit by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, Iraq, on Monday, March 29, 2004. Sean had been in the region for less than a month when he was killed. Schneider was the 13th Wisconsin soldier to die in Iraq. At the time of Sean's death almost 600 U.S. service members had died in Iraq since the beginning of the Spring 2003 military operation there. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Schneider had worked for a concrete company in Janesville, the town where he also grew up. Sean was a 2000 graduate of Janesville J.A. Craig High School. The Journal Sentinel also mentioned he held a 2.6 grade point average and was a member of the auto mechanics club. In the Army, Sean served as a mechanic with the Army's Company A, 115th Forward Support Battalion, Division Support Command, 1st Cavalry Division based in Fort Hood, Texas.

   3,587 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

   26,350 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring 2003.

   76 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

   108 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; and, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.