While writing this book, "Jobs of Bob" (click on the Category in this blog) on line, I notice I sometimes disconnect my present mindset from the past - as if I am writing about someone else - an old friend perhaps. But I am remiss if I do not mention it was the farm retail store that inspired me to coin the term, "Time Bandits." Scroll down my "Word Page" on my Web site www.cooldadiomedia.com and peruse the terms many of which have been inspired by banal at best, awful at worst, former blue-collar jobs of mine.
Time Bandits are:
"Companies that pay your poorly; give you no benefits; bring you in different days each week; schedule you for different times each day; if they give work evaluations at all they give you poor ones; they write you up if you are one minute late; fire you if you are one minute late twice; they are fraught with relatives as supervisors; their equipment is poor which effects your performance which causes them to claim you are too slow; and, they most likely give you a poor reference so they can keep you prisoner at their miserable jobs. These kind of work places have you working such odd and disorganized hours it is hard to look for another job. Their erratic hours make it hard to work a second job if you need one and are lucky enough to find one. The work they have you do wrecks your body. When you are finally beaten down to the point of no return they let you go, claiming, 'well, he just didn't take care of himself.'"
The above definition fits the farm retail store aptly. I started out full-time for eight dollars an hour less than I made in Texas. For awhile I had tried working there part-time while I tried out another job on the side at the "almighty State." For a time, I worked just every other weekend at the farm retailer while working full time at a landscape company. That was a job specific to their farm store tire service desk. They always needed weekend help at the overwhelmed-with-customers desk. Finally, I canned all the simultaneous part-time experiments to work full time as a mechanic in the farm store auto shop. The floor was hard, wet with melted snow, cold, and greasy. The tires were heavy. The customers were often lunatics. By the summer of 1995 my hands, body, back, and heart were thoroughly broken.
However, as my patience with shitty jobs such as this one were reaching a life's critical mass, something serendipitously happened. At 39 years old, the seeds were planted to go to college. I worked with college students ad nauseam at these lousy jobs. I was perennially broke, so why not be broke and educated to some degree? It may come in handy when I am sixty and my body will probably be broken like my father's most certainly was at that age.
The epiphany began in the greasy confines of the farm store auto repair shop in the summer of 1995 as I languished in the cold, dirt, grease, and insanity of "the mechanic culture." Two peoples that are rarely happy are mechanics and nurses. They fix other peoples' wrecks and illnesses, then have to give up their accomplishments back to the very people that brought in the catastrophes to be fixed.
Before I returned to college in the fall of that very year of 1995 we need to revisit about three more notorious blue-collar jobs that segued me into the threshold of life after 40. The second half of my work career is about to begin to be chronicled ahead. Beware of the pot holes, wrecks, and hitchhikes along the shoulder as we revisit my journey.
Wisconsin military service person of the week
Marine Corporal Jesse L. Thiry, age 23, of Casco, Wisconsin was killed by hostile fire in Anbar province, Iraq, on Monday, April 5, 2004. Corporal Thiry was in the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. Thiry died in Fallujah, where a mob attacked, killed, and mutilated four U.S. contractors just the week prior. At the time of Thiry's death, 631 U.S. service members had been killed in the Iraq war. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Thiry had been in Iraq less than a month when he was killed. Thiry was part of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force's mission of occupying Fallujah and Ramadi and other cities about 30 miles west of Baghdad. At the time it was one of the areas of Iraq with the most intense fighting during the U.S. military's then 11-month deployment in Iraq. The Journal Sentinel also mentioned that Corporal Thiry was a Marine weapons instructor in Quantico, Virgina. He transfered to an assignment that would take him to Iraq just eight months before he was scheduled to leave the military. Jesse Thiry is survived by his mom and dad Susan and Randy Thiry and seven siblings. He is the fourth of eight children and a graduate of Luxemburg-Casco High School where he wrestled and ran track. He entered the Marine Corps shortly after graduation. Marine Corporal Jesse Thiry is Wisconsin's 14th military service person to have died in Iraq since spring 2003.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
86,457 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
8,514 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,134 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
557 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
314 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
342 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
30,435 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
2,257 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
91 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
11 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
130 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.
