There was not much time for vacation during my foray into a small business endeavor. What evolved then was the skill of choosing one's battles well. Considering I was now a prisoner to seven-day-a-week, 14-hour-per-day work, I decided there would be no more work on Sundays.
The stage was set way back when we first moved into to our neat little apartment in the Old East Dallas borough of Lakewood. One Sunday, Heide sent me to get the oil changed on her little used Datsun 210 car at the mom and pop gas station around the corner and up the hill. The fellahs sat about with their feet on the desk. The shop was empty, and the television was on.
"Wow," I said, "It looks like you can get me right in for an oil change."
"It will be about three hours," one of the good ol' boys said.
Incredulously I asked, "Why so long in an empty shop?"
"Got to wait 'til after the Cowboy game son," the good ol' boy said quite matter-of-factly.
Years later just as I started my landscape business m
y father-in-law came to visit Dallas; it was around 1987. The Packers just happened to be in town. I ordered tickets for the game. The girl on the phone stopped me before I hung up and asked in an urgent voice if I was interested in season tickets.
"This is a cruel joke, right?" I asked. "The Giants, Bears, and Packers require a 100 year waiting list for season tickets. You have to will your waiting spot to your kids."
"People come and go in Dallas due to the oil and computer business - they are always giving up their tickets," she said rather apologetically.
For 19 Dollars a ticket per game I owned four Dallas Cowboy season tickets for three years. That was about 30 home games. The seats were at the 50 yardline but...at the top of that famous stadium with the hole in its roof. That was old Texas Stadium in Irving, Texas. Supposedly God watched his team through that hole. To me anyway, the rain, sleet, and intense heat whipped down where it hit me and my guests first as we sat yards from that hole. I watched Jerry Jones lose 15 games in his first season of Cowboy ownership after ousting Papa Tom Landry from the coaching helm and putting in friend Jimmy Johnson - the natives were restless. But they had drafted college star Troy Aikman and the poor guy got beat to death that first year starting as a rookie; and Jones and Johnson eventually prevailed. I did not get to see them make their Super Bowls only five years after taking over the team. Heide and I headed back home to live in Wisconsin.
I once met Jones. I was surprised at how tall he was. I went to a radio event at the stadium after the one and fifteen season. I was looking for a restroom. Jones was exiting the gift shop after rounding up some prizes for the audience and radio callers to the show. It was not officially open, but he owned the place.
He had an arm full of cups and items and looked at me and said, "Get the door for me son. Take a look around in the gift shop if you wish. By the way, you like my Cowboys?"
"Of course sir," I lied. They had only won one game - they sucked. But he struck an imposing profile. He got the last laugh just a few years later with three Super Bowl rings in four years under his ownership.
I came to love the ritual of going to the games. You had to walk about two miles to the stadium from the parking lots. We all had a great time making the pilgrimage with the hordes. I used the tickets to bring my landscape workers to the games from time to time. It was the only perk I could give them.
Well actually, once a year we tuned up each worker's own yard for free. But the Cowboy games will always be special.
Once we got a one-hundred year freeze in North Texas. All the pipes in the stadium froze for the game. Seventy thousand people full of beer, had to wait for the makeshift porta-toilets that were haphazardly brought in. I walked out to the parking lot to pee by a pole and got binged by a cop. I explained it was worse than the radio was saying about the frozen pipes.
He looked up at the sold out stadium and the lines of waiting people by the many porta-johns. "Fuck it," he said, and drove off.
At the time Johnson bought the team, it was the only pro football stadium in the National Football League you could bring your own cooler into. What a great time. As long as you could get the cooler through the plywood board with the square hole (about two feet by two feet) you could bring in all sorts of goodies and booze.
For a couple of years I also had four tickets to the indoor Arena Football team, the Dallas Texans. They played down at the old Reunion Arena. Indoor football was a hoot. The scores could easily be 91 to 87. A team could be behind by 50 points going into the third quarter and still win.
Those humble hours spent at the big games were happy times. I will never apologize for spending the money on that entertainment. We did after all, not get a vacation for five years straight. It was our vacation - one game at a time.
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)
Marine Corporal Matthew Ross Zindars, 21, Watertown, Wisconsin, died on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 in Diyala province, Iraq. He was serving in Battery K, 2nd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force out of Camp Pendleton, California. Zindars was one of three Marines killed in the combat operation when the Humvee he was in was struck by a roadside bomb. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted Matthew was very active in watercraft, snowboarding, rock climbing, and camping. He enlisted during his senior year in high school. The Journal Sentinel quoted Matthew's father as saying his son discussed attending the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater to study journalism after his military obligation. Zindars had volunteered for his second tour in Iraq in which his death occurred. He was born on September 12, 1985. In his youth Matthew was a member of the Lutheran Boy Pioneers and he attended Trinity-St. Luke's Lutheran School. He played football at Watertown High School, and graduated in 2004. Zindars entered the Marines in October 2004, and first deployed to Iraq with an artillery unit in March 2005. The Watertown Daily Times notes Zindar's Marine unit's job on his second Iraq tour was to perform security operations and clear explosives from roadways. He was due to return home in October 2007. The Watertown paper also quoted a friend of Matthew's as saying Zindars liked lifting weights in his teens. He had joined the Marines at 18 years old while still in high school. He was also a two-year member of American Legion Post 189. Wisconsin 2007 Senate Joint Resolution 79 states that at the time of his death Corporal Matthew Zindars was survived by mother Lynn Zindars; father Kenneth Zindars; sisters Tracy Kempf−Reichardt and Jennifer Kempf−Wilson; and brother, Mark Zindars. Matthew was preceded in death by brother Jason. Corporal Matthew Zindars was the 78th Wisconsin military service person to be killed in Iraq since March of 2003.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
99,171 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
9,811 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,433 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1442 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
318 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
833 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
32,001 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
9,828 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
103 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
27 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
145 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; www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf; and, icasualties.org.
