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Twentieth Job of Bob - Rural Ambulance - Part I - Driver, EMT, the beginnings of the return to college
This entry was posted on 2/9/2010 7:32 AM and is filed under Jobs of Bob.
I suppose it is poetic that I took a year hiatus in posting about my former jobs. And it is probably appropriate that I took a break in writing just when I got to about the halfway mark in my job chronology.
This particular ambulance job has many monikers. It could be called an activity; or, as this particular version played out it was a volunteer endeavor; however, it evolved over ten years from paying a stipend to actually being a part-time job for a couple years.
In the ten year relationship I had with Emergency Medical Services (EMS) ambulance work, it wove itself through my life especially during my return to college. I spent many a night and Sunday afternoon studying in the ambulance lounge. It also overlapped at least a half dozen other jobs along the way. With that complexity in mind, rather than try to write ten chapters about this experience all in a block of back-to-back postings, I should return to it from time to time as I write about the jobs during the same time frame.
In June of 1994 I had enough of the landscape world and abruptly left that job to go to the farm store full time. The two jobs had co-mingled for three years in various dynamics.
In July of 1995 I had enough of the farm store auto mechanic gig as well. There was never enough help; no one would take the auto shop manager job; customers roamed through the work area; and, at 39 years old, my body was being broken down to that of a sixty-five year old. My heart and spirit were pushed close to the limit of ever being able to reclaim faith in the working world - I walked out.
As usual, Heide did not bat an eye. "Who'd'a seen that coming?" she said with a sly smile that night. "Pull yourself together, mister."
We were in the old farm house on the edge of New Glarus. The village could not have had more than 1000 people. If you lived in town, you had to pick up your mail from the post office. That reminded me of my rural Lima Center back in the 1950s. All we had back there was a gas station and a post office slash general store - a village of 90. Ol' Guy Hudson ran the gas station back in Lima. He drove a Model-T Ford until he had to go in a nursing home in the 1980s. He would limp out of his cinder block shop, cigar in mouth, to pump gas from the one pump which damn near touched the edge of the road. He had a wooden leg. People thought he lost it in World War I. But, he lost it in a motorcycle crash after he came home from the war. Anyway, he would come out with end of cigar glaring like a blow torch. Then he would spill gas as he finished up. I loved to bring new girl friends there to check their reaction. "Hey, Keith, I knew your grand dad. Get your damn ass in here and help me put this part on that tractor over there." I would leave my girlfriend du jour in the pickup truck as I vanished into the tomb like shop to help old Guy. There one would find tools and machines Edison and Bell might have appreciated. If girl friend smiled when I got back with grease on hands, I knew she was a tough cookie. If she pouted I tucked that sign into the back of my brain to recall later if needed.
New Glarus brought back memories of those Lima times. They had a tractor repair shop behind the post office in New Glarus that reminded me of Ol' Guy's shop. One day I rode my bicycle down the hill to the post office to pick up the mail. On the counter of the post office under the glass was a small poster I had never noticed before. It was yellow with age and read: "Wanted, ambulance drivers. Stop by the fire station." They had just built a new stand-alone ambulance building (ambulance barn) separate from the fire station where the old poster was sending possible volunteers.
They got about five people to apply that summer - good for a town of 1000. They had long since saturated the possible pool of volunteers in the small town. But, new people were moving in as New Glarus was becoming an outer commuter community for Madison.
I finally hunted down an Emergency Medical System (EMS) service member and directly I was given a time to interview. The first step was to go to a Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) class. Then without too much fanfare, I would become a driver, assigned a pager, started attending monthly meetings, and endeavored to ride along on some "calls." I remember that they sent a bunch of us up to the Columbus Speedway for a day class on driving emergency vehicles. Heide asked me what it was like to finally ride in the "front" of a police car. Within a month I was encouraged to take the four-credit technical school class - Emergency Medical Technician - Basic ( EMT- B ). So much for just being a driver.
In late August 1995 I found myself traveling to the next village over to attend the Madison Area Technical School (MATC) class which was held at their old fire station three nights a week. Previously nearly 20 years prior, I had only attended college for one semester after I got out of the Army. Without thinking about it then, I had just stuck my foot back in college, a part-time experience that would end ten years later in graduate school. This one endeavor of ambulance work and its never-ending training would follow me through my entire ten years of college and part-time jobs until we moved from the New Glarus area about the time I finally ended my college work.
Note: This blog "Jobs of Bob" Category does not list the jobs chronologically - I write about the experiences as they pop up in my memory and I often revisit an older job. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Jobs of Bob Page for an ordered chronology.
Wisconsin Military Service Person Special Mention of the Week
(each week Cooldadiomedia mentions a Wisconsin service person killed in Iraq or Afghanistan)
This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Army Specialist Eric Poelman, 21, originally of Mount Pleasant who was killed in Baghdad, Iraq, on June 5, 2005. A roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle. Eric was on his second tour of duty in Iraq. He was a tank driver with the L Troop, 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Battalion. The unit's stateside home is Fort Carson, Colorado. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned Eric's parents home-schooled him and his two brothers. Poelman enlisted in the Army on January, 2003. He was first deployed in Iraq in November 2003. He returned to the U.S. just under a year later and was then redeployed in March, 2005. He was married between tours. His wife Renate was living in Racine with family at the time of his death. The Journal Sentinel went on to mention Eric and Renate once both worked at St. Mary's Medical Center in Racine. Poelman had worked there in food service. It was also noted he was active in his church and had worked on a church mission trip to Guatemala. At the time of his death Eric was survived by his wife of one year Renate, two brothers Andy and Greg, and his mom and dad Sally and Matthew. Specialist Eric Poelman was the 39th military service member from Wisconsin to die in Iraq since the spring of 2003.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
95,310 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
9,373 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,379 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
973 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
317 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
630 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
31,648 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,923 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
101 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
17 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
139 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
17 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
Wisconsin military service person special mention 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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