Some time after the furniture store job (Ninth Job of Bob) my girl friend of two years up and ran off with some "college feller." Just as well. After the feed mill canned me (Eleventh Job of Bob), I left the sour memory of "the girlfriend" and the lousy jobs and I up and hopped on my 1975 Kawasaki 500 motorcycle and headed to Ohio to see an Army buddy and then out to Colorado to do the same. It was the summer of 1980. There was a heat wave that summer and I would end up traveling across Kansas at night because it was so hot during the day. The pavement was so hot on the Interstate during the day, the bottoms of your feet would burn from the heat.
My dad had declared I should not have a big motor cycle (I always had a scooter of some type as a kid) until I was an adult. When I returned from the Army I bought three motorcycles (just a caveat in case you are a dad with a son). I chose the fastest one to take cross country. It was a two-stroke. There aren't many left because most of them have been wrecked. I would eventually wreck this one too.
When I returned from seeing my two Army buddies, it was clear that I was broke. I had had enough of stuffy towns like Whitewater, Janesville, and Beloit. I tried my luck in "Lake Geneva, the resort town Chicago built." I found a tiny ad in the job center office for a bowling alley that needed a bouncer. Only a place like Lake Geneva could need a bouncer in a bowling alley. The drinking age was 18 in Wisconsin and kids traveled from states all over the region to drink in Wisconsin. Across the state line, one of the first towns they would hit was none other than, Lake Geneva. It was the home of the Dungeons and Dragons creator. It was also the home of the Wriggly empire. You know the gum people - Wriggly Field in Chicago. Also, it would inspire the TV soap, The Young and the Restless. It was also the home of a lot of people who wanted to be somebody but never made it. It was mostly the home of a lot of drunks that liked to fight in the bars.
I drove over to the bowling alley and ordered up a beer. I sized the place up and wondered why they needed a bouncer. There was just a couple of old men playing Cribbage in the bar. The manager smiled and said, "Oh, not up here, we need you down in the disco in the basement, when can you start?" So began my tavern-bar-disco-bowling alley bouncer bartender days. It was there I would meet my then future and now current wife.
This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Lance Corporal Shane K. O'Donnell, 24, of De Forest. Lance Cpl. O'Donnell died during combat operations in Babil province, south of Baghdad and Fallujah on November 8, 2004. He was a member of the Marine Reserves battalion in Company G, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve. The battalion is headquartered in Illinois. Some 900 Marines were activated June 1, 2004; they arrived in Iraq in September. There is about 175 Marines in Madison based Golf Company and 160 in Milwaukee based Fox Company. They are rifle companies. Lance Cpl. Daniel Wyatt, 22, of Caledonia, of Fox Company, was killed a month earlier. O'Donnell is the 24th Wisconsin soldier to die in the Iraq war. De Forest is a town of about 8,000, north of Madison. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned Shane played football at De Forest High School. He had also attended Madison Area Technical College. Shane was single and had worked construction. The Journal Sentinel went on to say O'Donnell joined the Madison Marine unit in October of 2002. Lance Cpl. O'Donnell is survived by his mom Peg, and Eric a younger brother.
3,789 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
27,936 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring 2003.
79 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.
