By August of 1992 it became clear cutting grass was truly just a temporary task in a place like Wisconsin with such short summers. I had been spending my spare time snooping around businesses to see if they might be worth applying at. Madison was where I was focusing on because Heide left instructions that a larger city might be a better place for us to start out in. It is also the center of government and academia in the state.
One day I walked into the consummate farm retail store up in Madison. They have around 40 stores in the Midwest. I asked the service desk for an application. The girl summoned the assistant manager, he listened to my story, sized me up, and asked rather matter-of-factly if I could start full-time the next day. I was taken aback a bit but later realized it was the beginning of the 1990s return to better times. Later on in the decade you could quit in the morning and have another retail job by noon.
I finished up a couple loyal lawn customers through the rest of the summer and deferred to my new job. They put me in the oil department. All day I stacked cases of oil and also stocked the oil shelves. Remember, they had both an agricultural and domestic auto and truck retail theme. There were and still are thousands of loyal customers for that company in the region. The first pay check stung. I only made five dollars an hour. It was a long cry from the 13 Bucks an hour I had made in Dallas. But, I tucked in my pride and embraced the Wisconsin culture I had missed for over a decade. Adding both being in the Army and then living in Texas, I had lost touch with my roots.
One day the Amish came in great numbers. Apparently they liked the fact that the store stocked parts and supplies for equipment that was often out of production. They hired a bus to bring them. Segueing off the Amish thought it always amused me that the giant store was basically segregated into a girl half and a boy half. The perceived female products were all on one end and the male macho stuff was on my end. The clerks' gender in the respective areas matched the products. Years later I would see it again in Iraq - that male verses woman role mantra.
They had a break room as big as my bedroom - a room that needed to accommodate a couple hundred employees. One day I sat in the packed room at break. A man came in, he must have been in his forties. His eyes bugged out, his hair was disheveled, his face red with anxiety. The conversation in the room slowed. The bug-eyed man looked around like a lunatic and then planted his gaze on me.
"What the hell is your story?" said Bug-eyes.
"I am stocking oil today," I said. Now I was curious who cared, and besides, I always stocked oil.
"We need auto parts moved down from the warehouse, damn it," said Bug-eyes. "What the hell do we need to beat oil to death for?" he continued. Then as quickly as he came in, he vanished.
"Who the hell was that?" I asked the girl sitting next to me at the crowed table as she peeled her orange. She did not even have enough room to move her shoulders to negotiate the orange.
"Oh, don't pay any attention to him," she said with just the hint of a person who had just seen a specter. Then she looked up from her orange at me and said, "He's just the store manager."
Wisconsin military service person of the week
Army Sergeant Warren S. Hansen, 36, of Clintonville was killed Saturday, November 15, 2003 when two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters collided and crashed in the northern city of Mosul. Sergeant Hansen was in the 9th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Warren worked in aviation inspections. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said Hansen was single and joined the military soon after high school. Two other Wisconsin soldiers were killed in the collision: Army Specialist Eugene A. Uhl III, 21, of Amherst; and, Second Lieutenant Jeremy L. Wolfe, 27, of Menomonie. Hansen is survived by his mother, stepfather, brother and stepbrother. Sergeant Warren Hansen became Wisconsin's sixth military service person to die in the current Iraq war.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
84,099 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
8,301 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,085 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
505 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
312 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
306 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
30,143 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1,992 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
90 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
10 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
127 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
15 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; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; washingtonpost.com; thehighground.org; Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs; iraqbodycount.org; and, icasualties.org.
