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Seventeenth Job of Bob - Farm, Hardware, Retail, Auto Service - Part V - musical houses, motorcycle redux
This entry was posted on 7/10/2008 7:48 AM and is filed under Jobs of Bob.
It was obvious that while I was at the farm store it was a transition in both Heide's and my life. Heide had worked in a retail corporate office while in Texas. When we emigrated back to Wisconsin, she could only work in one of the retail stores as there was no corporate branch in our area. She would soon find a job with a non-profit that represented a childhood disability. One of their annual events is a huge Harley Davidson motorcycle ride. It is something we still stay connected with to this day.
Heide called the landlord to come pick up the old refrigerator from our duplex because she had a nicer one she wanted to use. A young guy about 23 years old with straggly hair and wearing camouflage army pants and in an old beat up truck came to pick up the clunker appliance. "Tell the landlord thanks," Heide said.
The young fellow looked befuddled and said, "I am the landlord."
In mid-1994 we had become weary of living in the duplex in Madison. One day the young owner of the place stopped by to fix the gutter drain pipes and casually asked me if I wanted to buy the place. "Ain't got no money," I said and sighed.
He paused for a second and looked puzzled. "What does money have to do with it? I want to know if you want the place, the rest is just details," he said and gave me an incredulous look.
It was tempting to take our young landlord up on his offer but about the same time Heide and I found a farmette to rent on the edge of New Glarus. New Glarus is about 20 miles south of Madison and known for its Swiss heritage. We got a good deal in the whole presentation because it had fallen in disrepair. We were experts at making it livable with minimal effort - the new landlord was grateful.
I had always had a motorcycle going way back to the 1960s. The pre-crotch-rocket 1977 750cc Kawasaki I had before I got married and then brought down to Texas was in disrepair. It sat in the barn at our little farm presentation. Once I started working in the auto shop I had a bit of extra cash to get it rebuilt. Also, working in a mechanic shop inspired me to tinker again. A fellow south of Madison specialized in old Japanese motorcycles. He doted over it and made it ridable again. I had brought it in to him over the winter so it would be ready in the spring.
It was about the second time I rode my refurbished machine and with the new found relationship with my old mechanical love, I dawned a snowmobile suit and took it to work in the yet still cold spring. It was a two-cylinder and a racing machine in its day in 1977 - but now it was 1995. Anyway, at 10:00 p.m. in the cool evening I was heading home from the auto shop back to our little farm house in New Glarus. At the last stop-and-go-light before my stretch of country ride to the farm house, I heard a loud screech. "Damn," I thought, "Sounds like someone is going to get hit." About that time, I felt a jolt and began to be pushed into the intersection. In front of me was a dump truck. I came closer and closer to its tailgate. About an inch from the truck the pushing stopped. I hopped off my cycle and threw down my helmet. "Damn," I said, "I just got this damn bike fixed."
As it turned out a young girl about 16 years old, had plowed her car into the car behind me. She hopped out and giggled to the guys in the car she hit, "You guys ok, hee, hee, hee?" It soon became evident her young mom somehow got word of the crash and came to the scene. The mom looked at the crushed car, then she looked at my motorcycle. You could pick up from her expression that her heart was sinking. Then the kid driving the crushed car hopped out. I realized right away he had a prosthetic arm that apparently had fallen off in the impact. But the mom did not pick up on that nuance and abruptly fainted when she mistakenly assumed her daughter had cut this guy's arm off.
As it turned out my tail light was only cracked. The kid's bumper had only impacted my rear tire and it had absorbed all the force without damage. The light remains cracked to this day. The old bike is now 31 years old. The then young mom is most likely totally gray by now.
Wisconsin military service person of the week
Army Specialist Bert E. Hoyer, 23, an Army Reservist died Wednesday, March 10, 2004 in an explosion when his convoy was ambushed in a roadside bombing in Baqubah, north of Baghdad. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Hoyer was a 1999 graduate of Ellsworth High School. He enlisted in the Army Reserves while he was a student at Vermilion Community College in Ely, Minnesota. There he was studying wildlife management and had one semester left. Hoyer shipped out to Iraq in April 2003. According to the Journal Sentinel, Bert enjoyed writing back to kids who had been writing to soldiers in Iraq. The 652nd is described as a bridge and road engineering unit that had built bridges in Baghdad and across the Tigris River. Another Wisconsin soldier previously killed in Iraq from the 652nd was Sargent 1st Class Dan Gabrielson, 40, of Frederic. Two soldiers from the Michigan detachment of the 652nd have also been killed in Iraq. Specialist Hoyer is the fourth person from the 652nd Engineer Company to die in Iraq. Hoyer is survived by his parents, and a younger brother and sister. Specialist Bert E. Hoyer was the 11th military service person from Wisconsin to die in Iraq since the beginning of the war.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
85,325 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
8,406 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,115 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
533 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
314 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
331 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
30,275 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
2,134 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.
129 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.
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