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Nineteenth Job of Bob - Landscape Maintenance Company, Part III - Missing arms but 10 snow shovels, '67 pickup redux
This entry was posted on 10/16/2008 9:11 PM and is filed under Jobs of Bob.
While I was in Texas, about 1983 I had purchased my old 1967 Ford half ton truck for 700 dollars. Being from Texas it did not have any rust on it - no salt on the roads in winter. From time to time I tinkered with it and drove it to work and around. Often I would lose interest in it for a year and let it sit. While I was at the landscape company in Middleton, Wisconsin I once again resurrected the beast and drove it once again off and on. I had built tool shelves in the back while we lived in the apartment in Texas and bought an even older camper top to put over the menagerie. It had a cheery bomb muffler and I put two wide dirt-track wheels on the back. In its day the 352 engine cut some horse power. When I tinkered with it, it mostly made a lot of noise and met with the chagrin of Heide as I pulled up to the curb of either the house in Texas or later to the duplex in Madison. The summer pickup truck tinkering experience while I worked for the landscape company eventually outweighed the cold winter I spent procrastinating putting the new heater core in it. The old truck actually had metal fixtures and dash in the cab, unlike modern vehicles that are half plastic. Some one had painted the once white truck with black hobby spray paint. In its last days, the white bled through the top of the hood. The out of place truck in a modern front-wheel-drive car culture always solicited some kind of comment from co-workers and bystanders. The old truck is a happy memory now that life has moved on and darker times accumulate in the history book of one's long life.
It was during that bitter winter I worked for the snow removal crew of the landscape maintenance company that the seeds were sown for my final months working in that industry. We had a fellow named Jay that had lost his right arm in some manner as a child. Once in a while he would wear a prosthetic but frequently he went without. He maneuvered quite well with his disability. He drove a riding mower; drove a stick-shift truck while smoking, eating, and drinking coffe; and, could do just about everything the rest of us could do except wrestle a shovel full of dirt.
Then there was another fellow named Jack that had lost the use of his left arm in a motorcycle crash. His situation was similar to Jay's also being able to function at just about everything except wrestle a shovel full of dirt. His unusable arm often sat idle at his side.
One miserable night after Deep-voice Dude had called us all in during a horrific blizzard, Jack, Jay, and I sat in a pickup truck while it warmed up. The one thing one must be cognizant of is that the term "snow plow" often simply means "snow shovel." You will probably never sit behind the wheel of a warm snow plow truck. A sucker like myself will most often find one's self shoveling out fire hydrants, and emergency doors at any particular corporate building the landscape company gleaned a contract with.
I glanced through the back window at the bed and the rear of the pickup as Jay lite a cigarette and Jack munched on a bag of chips. There hooked to the truck was a trailer with two small tractors equipped with attached snow blowers and heated cabs. In the bed of the truck sat a pile of sand, some bags of salt, and ..... a dozen snow shovels. I turned back around and rested my head on the back of the seat.
Then it struck me like an epiphany. I sat between two young men, each with an arm problem, each unable to use one main blue-collar tool.... a damn shovel. A man with no right arm sat to my left. A man with a useless left arm sat on my right. Out side, the temperature was five below zero, the wind blew at 50 miles an hour, Jack and I had so many cloths on we could not move. Jay had on a wind breaker, some light garden gloves, and wore no hat...he often bragged about cutting other areas of his personal budget to buy cigarettes and beer.
Deep-voice Dude came up to the driver's window dressed like an Eskimo. "He looked at Jay's wind breaker and then looked at my warm ensemble of cloths which were still inadequate to my liking. "Can you loan Jay a coat or two, Bob?" Deep-voice Dude said without even a hint of logic.
Surmising I would be the one out side of the heated snow blower tractors, I said without hesitation, "No, I catch pneumonia easily." Deep-voice Dude looked like I had just shot his dog. I did not apologize for not sharing my clothing with an idiot on behalf of a second idiot.
Nor, did I not apologize when I quit the job just a few months later during the spring of 1994. That is when I decided to retreat to one job in lieu of working two part-time jobs. I would try one last time at the farm store to go full-time in their auto shop as a mechanic. But as described in past chapters, that too would come to an end in the summer of 1995.
There is one last hard-core blue-collar job I must revisit before veering into my return-to-college era part-time jobs. God bless the forklift driving, welder, armored car builder experience...
Wisconsin Military Service Person of the Week
Marine Lance Corporal Shane K. O'Donnell, 24, of De Forest died during combat operations in Babil province, south of Baghdad and Fallujah on Monday, November 8, 2004. He was a member of the Marine Reserves battalion in Company G, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve. The battalion is headquartered in Illinois. Some 900 Marines were activated June 1, 2004; they arrived in Iraq in September of that year. There is about 175 Marines in Madison-based Golf Company and 160 in Milwaukee-based Fox Company. They are rifle companies. Lance Corporal Daniel Wyatt, 22, from Caledonia, of Fox Company, was killed a month earlier. Shane's hometown of De Forest is a town of about 8,000, just north of Madison. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned Shane played football at De Forest High School. He had also attended Madison Area Technical College. Shane was single and had worked construction in civilian life. The Journal Sentinel went on to say O'Donnell joined the Madison Marine unit in October of 2002. Lance Corporal O'Donnell is survived by his mom Peg, and Eric a younger brother. Marine Lance Corporal Shane K. O'Donnell was the 24th Wisconsin military service person to die in the Iraq war.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
88,253 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
8,693 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,180 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
606 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
314 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
371 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
30,680 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
2,490 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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