After I got a good snoot full of trimming ubiquitous hedges in 100 plus degree heat in Dallas, the Parks Department powers that be felt I should manage the chemical / fertilizer room at the Fair Park Service Center. They claimed somebody needed to be assigned to organize the room because too much stuff came up missing. Agricultural chemicals were expensive. I later realized they were not being stolen, it was just very hard to keep track of hundreds of pesticides and herbicides when much of it was used so often in small horticultural quantities. I worked also with the two chemical applicators that operated out of that service center. I straightened out the storage room, organized the fertilizer bags, and accounted for chemicals they did not even know they had. Some of it had even been placed on the Environmental Protection Agency's discontinued chemical list. You know - those chemicals no longer deemed safe.
The management prodded me to take the State of Texas Chemical Applicator's exam. There were many categories. I attained the necessary distinctions to kill weeds in parks. I would often assist Lee, one of the applicators. Ol' Lee-the-Pea was a little guy with a big heart. He could speak Spanish fluently. He was one of the only guys there that had a college degree other than Marvin. I believe this made him a target of the ever "banal" management that ran most of the place. I of course, did not have a degree in those days so I had the run of the place as a blue-collar utility guy. I fit in anywhere.
I liked to back the big spray tank rig in tight spots in Fair Park. I did this out of boredom. Lee would drag his 100 foot hose to the weed patch. I would back the rig inches from the crumbling Art Deco structures of Fair Park. The park was preserved by neglect. It had been built in the 1930s for the Texas 100th anniversary - hence Art Deco everywhere. The park was in the ghetto-esk area of South Dallas and thus was abandoned by the movers and shakers in City Hall. Yet, this neglect actually preserved the artistic structures. They were spared the destruction of post Kennedy assassination Dallas renovation and growth.
Another friend of mine had parents that came from Wisconsin but he was born in Texas. They had moved to Texas in the 1950s for an earlier boom time - Texas had many over the years. My friend Kent had some college credits and stayed on the rough side of management's notice. Kent often also worked with the killing of weeds and such. Most of the blue-collar workers knew Kent as the dude whose parents came from "West Conson." No matter that Kent was born in Texas. This would later be one Texas nuance I would add to my list of reasons it did not pay to bother living there any longer - an outsider can never be a Texan no matter how long you have lived there. Kent stayed in hot water because he was often late for work. Kent liked to live up with the better half in North Dallas. The rest of us lived to the East, South, Oak Cliff area, and Central regions - us rabble. One day he pleadingly stated to our supervisor, "I can't part the cars on Central Expressway like Moses parting the waters!" This got Kent in deeper do-do with the old supervisor (Ol' Papa) who only got to the Eighth Grade.
Ol' Papa lived on the East side (most often referred to as Pleasant Grove) like so many park employees did. East side was old Texas landscape, timbre, and people. Ol' Papa had actually been employed by the city when Kennedy was shot. The odious "Grassy Knoll" which is part of the infamous Dealey Plaza where the JFK assassination took place is city park property. Papa had worked that acreage for years. Guys like Kent usually got a raised eyebrow from the venerable Papas of "old, big D."
This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Lance Corporal Travis M. Wichlacz, 22, from West Bend died when a bomb was detonated while he was on patrol in a convoy in Babil Province, a region southwest of Baghdad, Iraq. Travis died on February 5, 2005. Wichlacz was a 2002 graduate of West Bend West High School. He was a member of the Milwaukee-based Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned Travis had married nine months prior to his death to Angela Coakley, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Lance Corporal Wichlacz was the 34th member of the military from Wisconsin to die in Iraq since spring, 2003.
3,887 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
464 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
28,629 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1,806 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.
