I was thinking about how convoluted "the media" and pop culture reacts to super stars and entertainers and their petty lives that are thrown in our faces. An entire nation is riveted to what team an overpaid primadonna professional sports player will choose to move to. 

    Everyday us rabble make life-changing decisions. No one cares. I was reflecting back to 1973 and '74 when I made the decision to join the Army. Viet Nam was still rumbling in the background of an entire generations' minds. The military draft had just ended - although we were still required to register yet. The economy was hitting the dumper. Nixon's Watergate capers were about to bring down a Presidency. The Cold War was a way of life now well into its second generation. The Baby Boom was starting to collectively realize its mortality.  It was clear to almost every soul in the country baring a few hardliners, that our American Viet Nam War had been a catastrophe - and at the time still lingered in limbo. The Arab Oil Embargo had contributed to high fuel prices.  Unemployment was climbing.  The entire nation was cynical.

    As for me, my dad was reflective - and wise - insisting small-operation family farming was on the precipice of national collapse. Yes, people hung on over the decades. Farmers adapted to other schemes - turning their farms into golf courses; planting alternative crops; raising exotic animals; turning to corn or soybeans as a mainstay; and nowadays in the Twenty-first Century, turning their operations into organic farms. Dad foresaw that all these schemes and the old dairy scheme had a couple things in common. They would require a great deal of back-breaking, seven-days-per-week work; and, they would be contingent on the one owner of the small businesses. If he or she got sick, the operation could perish. Dad knew this, he had functioned on the margins of this dilemma for decades as a small family farm operator.  He often worked while sick - it just was what it was.

    A high school classmate of mine had joined the Army. He came home from Basic Training and I had a chat with him. 

    "No body is being beaten with sticks in the Army, as far as I can tell," my classmate had said to me. "And, it is a paid full-time job," he added.  

    He continued with, "And, I am getting to see parts of the country I could never afford to see otherwise."

    Take your self out of the Twenty-first Century for a second.  Fifty years ago, people did not just hop on a plane and go the Paris for the weekend, like some of my college colleagues recently did.  Back when I was a kid, often the only way you got to travel was to...join the damn military.  Like it or not. 

    Then he quietly added a caveat, "'Nam is for the most part over now."   

    The catastrophic end to our Viet Nam War would come a year later in 1975 as our forces scrambled to get what was left of our presence there out as the communists overran what was left of South Viet Nam.  Neither of us or anyone else saw it coming; or, if anyone did, there were few who cared. 

    I remember taking a walk around the farm with the dog to think about the possibility of joining the Army. A co-worker at the gas station I worked at who had recently got out of the Army was constantly feeding me tips on how to negotiate the nuances of military life. One variable was that if I joined for three years as opposed to two years, I could lock in a duty station - baring any major new war or any re-ignition of 'Nam. My co-worker had managed to stay in Germany all through his service even in the height of the Viet Nam War. 

    I remember thinking about what I would be leaving behind. The beautiful farm land; my family; a possible future as a farmer; a beautiful state; my girlfriend; my truck; and, my beloved dog Sandy. 

    In retrospect, it was an amazing decision for an 18 year old kid. And to be honest, if confronted with a decision like that today, I am not sure I could do it again. The price is just too high. Youth tempers mortality. 

    My decision to go, changed my life forever. It was a quiet decision that millions of young people made in the same era. No television news conferences, no publicity, no one cared but the many families. 

    The time I lost in the Army with the things and people I left behind can never be recovered. It leaves a whole in my life I will take with me until I die.

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)

    Petty Officer 2nd Class Jaime Suzanne Jaenke, 29, of Bay City, Wisconsin, died Monday, June 5, 2006. She was killed as a result of enemy action when her Humvee was struck by a roadside bomb in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Jaenke was a Navy Seabee Reservist and assigned to Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 25, U.S. Navy Reserve, based out of Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. She was one of two sailors killed in the incident. Jaenke was a corpsman and field medic assigned to the Naval unit which gave combat service support for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. Her unit was activated in January and sent overseas in March. Jaenke was activated in January with the unit and had been overseas for a few months before the attack. As Seabee reservists, her unit provided infrastructure support for combat officers, such as building airstrips and housing. Bay City, Wisconsin is a small town on the Mississippi River on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border just south of Minneapolis and St. Paul. However, Jaime was claimed as a native by a couple of states. The Des Moine Register noted her as from Iowa Falls and said she was the first female Iowan to die in the war in Iraq. They also noted she was the forty-second Iowan to die in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Jaenke had ties to Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota, according to Minneapolis television station KARE. Before joining the Naval Reserves, Jaenke worked as an emergency medical technician in Ellsworth, Wisconsin. The Des Moine Register said Jaenke lived in Iowa Falls during her early childhood attending kindergarten through second grade there. The family then moved to Bay City, Wisconsin, where she graduated from the Ellsworth High School. The Des Moine Register went on to mention she had only recently returned to Iowa after living for years in Minnesota and had planned to start an equestrian business in Iowa Falls when she returned from Iraq. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted her as the 57th member of the military from Wisconsin to die in Iraq and the third Navy female casualty. Jaime acquired a love for horses at an early age. She began riding at age 7 and continued for the rest of her life. She planned to attend the Ellsworth Area Community College in their nursing program. She also planned then to return to her love of horses at her parents’ stables in Iowa Falls. After a brief marriage and the birth of her daughter, she began working for the Best Maid Cookie factory, and also worked for Ellsworth Area Ambulance as an Emergency Medical Technician in Ellsworth, Wisconsin. She later worked for Xcel Energy as an armed guard at their Prairie Island facility. Jaenke attended Prairie View Elementary School in Hager City, Wisconsin and went to middle school and high school in Ellsworth. The Iowa Falls Times Citizen Obituary Archives stated that her funeral was held in Iowa Falls with military honors. She was laid to rest at the Alden Cemetery in Alden, Iowa. Jaime was born on November 12, 1976 in Iowa Falls. At the time of her death she was survived by daughter Kayla; bothers Garrett, Ryan, and Justin; and parents, Larry and Susan Jaenke. Jaime Jaenke was the 42nd Iowan to die in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001; and, the 57th Wisconsin military service person to die in Iraq since the spring of 2003. 

          As of this blog entry's posting date:

    96,844 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
    
    9,550 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    4,411 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003. 

    1152 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.

    318 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    746 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001. 

    31,860 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003. 

    6,355 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001. 

    102 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    19 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.

    142 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    21 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.