During high school, Dad let me use the old 1966 Fairlane 500. Too bad it was a four-door. It had the 289 cubic inch engine the Mustangs of the era had. It must have been the fall of 1972. I remember talking about the incident to a fellow football player the evening of the crash. In dairy regions there is a thing called the "milk truck." No, not the kind in the old black-and-white movies that brings the bottles of milk to your door. The milk produced on a dairy farm must be hauled to the processing plant. This is facilitated be a guy or now days perhaps a gal that comes and picks up the bulk milk out of your holding tank and loads it on a tanker-truck. The milk truck.
At some point Ol' Bud the milk truck driver started backing into the driveway. I don't know, maybe it was a Department of Transportation thing. He used to pull in and then turn around by the barn and milk house (a place were the milk holding tank was), but at some point he started backing in from the road. Ol' Bud was the brother of my Mom's, sister's husband. In other words, the brother of my-uncle-by-marriage. Confused, that's ok - it is a rural thing. Bud and family lived down the rural street we did. Anyway, Bud was an easy going guy and always whistled while he pumped the milk into his truck. He came and went every day without fanfare. He never pontificated much - he always moved on to the next farm. He stuck to business, but he whistled anyway. The milk could not wait.
One day I backed the Fairlane out of the dirt-floor garage across from the house as I always did to head off to high school in Whitewater. Once you got your driver's license it was not cool to ride the school bus any more. Anyway, I had to back across the driveway at a 90 degree angle. Blam! The car was being pushed sideways down the driveway. I got my bearings, I realized there was a huge silver bumper inches from my face stuck in the driver's window. The side of the old Fairlane slowly caved in as I continued my side journey down the driveway. My Fairlane fit quite nicely across the back of the milk truck. Bud finally stopped. It took a few seconds because he had a lumbering old powerful tanker.
Had the bumper been an inch or so up or down, I might have lost my head and never knew what hit me. As it turned out, Dad and Bud went to the junk yard a month or so later and split the cost of two replacement doors for the Fairlane. The three of us pushed the frame of the car out again with some hydraulic jacks and cribbing (wood blocks). Every one seemed to want to share the responsibility for the mishap. As it turned out, I only suffered a bruised ego and a stiff neck. The stiff neck got worked out in football practice, the ego took one for the team.
This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is U.S. Marine Corporal Adrian V. Soltau, 21 of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Corporal Soltau was on his second tour of duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was killed in an explosion Monday, September 13, 2004 near Fallujah, in Anbar Province, Iraq. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel stated that, Adrian followed his older brother Andre, 23, onto the football team and honor roll at Milwaukee Madison High School, then into the Marine Corps. The Journal Sentinel went on to say Corporal Soltau was nearing his time to come home. Adrian Soltau has seven siblings. He went to boot camp in August 2001 two years after his brother entered the Corps. Corporal Adrian V. Soltau was in Company A, 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. He was killed in combat action. Adrian was the 21st soldier from Wisconsin and the second graduate of Milwaukee Public Schools to die in the fighting since the United States entered Iraq in March 2003.
3,733 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
27,662 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring 2003.
78 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
112 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.
