The people at WisOpinion.com were nice enough to post my Cowboy versus Packer piece on their Web site on this past Monday the 26th. It inspired me to think about posting a piece the next day I wrote on the subject 10 years ago now. I wrote it shortly after the Packers won that Super Bowl in 1997 and were on their way to another one via the Dallas Cowboys. My editor suggested I not post two Cowboys versus Packers postings in a row. It has been suggested that I re-post the old sports opinion piece only if the Packers and Cowboys meet in the play-offs this season. So be it.
How about in honor of the Cowboys I post a Date with Fate experience I had while working in Dallas? About 1990, I had quit the City of Dallas to focus on my own landscape maintenance company. My customer base had gone from 10 to 250 rather quickly. The number of clients brought me around the city. And, it is a big place. All major roads seem to meet just south of downtown in a junction affectionately and coequally called "The Mixmaster."
One afternoon I was hurriedly driving my crew truck and equipment to a job site on the west side of town. I had a one-ton commercial Ford pickup pulling a 16-foot, four-wheel trailer full of equipment. In the front seat with me was two of my best helpers. In the back of the covered truck sat another. We blasted down the freeway and entered the odious and notorious Mixmaster. Multiple lanes, on-ramps, and off-ramps merged in all directions. The lead-in flow brought you into the cavernous and Orwellian interchange. Traffic flowed bumper to bumper at 65 miles per hour. Suddenly up ahead, somewhere in the midst of the eight-lane race track a hub cap rolled down the middle of the dynamics - not a good sign, usually meant a side-swipe. Then fenders began to fly, cars began to swerve, tail lights began to flash. In a moment, dozens of vehicles were sideways, backwards, in the guardrail, and screeching into each other.
My two guys in the front seat just kept eating their lunch. Anthony said rather calmly, "Just stay straight, white boy." Ramiro said, "Crazy peoples, look at the crazy peoples." Robert Lee dozed in the back.
We threaded the carnage like a bullet passing through the open doors of several side-by-side shot gun tenant houses. In the rear view mirror I could see the wreckage. It looked like a Hollywood movie set - crossways cars, trucks, parts, wheels, wreckage.
When I got home that night I went through the mail. While I looked over the boring advertisements I thought of a friend who once suggested it was impossible to part the jammed up Mixmaster at rush hour - impossible to part it like Moses might part the waters. I opened a notice from my business insurance company last. It informed me the insurance on my work truck had expired a couple days prior.
This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Staff Sergeant Todd Olson, 36, who died December 27, 2004, at the 67th Combat Support Hospital in Tikrit, Iraq. He had sustained wounds a day earlier from a roadside bomb detonated in Samarra, Iraq. Olson's home was in Loyal, Wisconsin. Todd was killed two weeks after his Wisconsin National Guard unit arrived in Iraq. He died on patrol when hit by the bomb in Samarra, a town north of Baghdad. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned Olson had studied finance at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse; he was married and the father of three teenage boys and a 5-year-old girl; he was a member of the Loyal School Board; a loan officer at the M&I Bank in Loyal and Neillsville; a youth group leader at Trinity Lutheran Church in Loyal; and a youth football coach. Staff Sergeant Olson joined the National Guard after he graduated from Loyal High School in 1986. He was attached to the Neillsville Unit Detachment 1, Company C, 1st Battalion, 128th Infantry Regiment, Wisconsin Army National Guard. They had been activated for training in Mississippi in June of 2004 and arrived in Kuwait in November. Staff Sergeant Olson was the 33rd soldier from Wisconsin to die in Iraq since spring 2003.
3,876 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
464 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
28,530 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1,797 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
82 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
6 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
124 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
14 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; and, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
