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Nineteenth Job of Bob - Landscape Maintenance Company, Part I - drawn to the land
This entry was posted on 10/2/2008 4:08 AM and is filed under Jobs of Bob.
Seeing the writing on the wall, long before quitting the State job, I had put in an application with a large landscape maintenance company in the Madison area. I found them in a gardening magazine in an article about the largest landscape companies in the United States. To my surprise the fourth largest was in Middleton, Wisconsin. Middleton is a suburb of Madison. The long cold winter here would seem to be contrary to their status but they built and maintained projects all over the country.
I must have put in the application just before the beginning of the year of 1993. I had also submitted an earlier application some time in the summer of 1992, but timing is important when applying in the seasonal work world of Wisconsin landscaping. They most likely already had their crews together by mid-summer 1992 - I received no response and went to work for the farm store during the day and then too, the State during the night. But winter is when they start putting their landscape crews together and my second application afforded me an interview.
My interviewer, a deep-voiced older fellow, seemed surprised I had so much agricultural and landscape experience. Without checking my experience claims, he hired me to work at one of their major accounts for the spring of 1993. The location was at one of the many huge insurance companies that calls Madison, Wisconsin home - corporate headquarters. The landscape company had installed the landscape at the new world headquarters campus and then secured the maintenance contract.
I remember standing out in one of the gigantic open fields adjacent to the new shiny insurance buildings. The big hilly green space had once been dairy farm fields. I paused and thought to myself, "this is my home state, these fields and woods are my home - it is good to be home - I wondered then what my life-long dairy farmer dad might think if he were still alive." He had taken a pause from farming to fight in World War II, and then he came back home to spend the rest of his life farming. I had come back too and I openly wondered if an indomitable connection to this land, a land so familiar to me, was the driving force that brought me back to Wisconsin.
Wisconsin military service person of the week
Marine Private First Class Andrew Halverson, 19, of Muscoda, Wisconsin was killed on Saturday, October 9, 2004 by hostile enemy fire in Anbar province. Halverson had been assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force based at Camp Pendleton, California. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Andrew was known as a "character" and liked to joke around. He was voted the class clown in his senior year of high school and he is said to have gotten along with everybody. Andrew graduated from Riverdale High School in 2003 and had played on their football team. Muscoda is in southwestern Wisconsin, and has a population of around 1,500. The Journal Sentinel went on to say Halverson also helped his father with his flooring business. Private First Class Andrew Halverson was the 22nd Wisconsin military service person to be killed in Iraq since the spring of 2003.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
87,643 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
8,687 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,174 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
601 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
314 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
372 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
30,642 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
2,451 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.
135 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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