In the short year and a half I spent working for the large Madison area Landscape Company, I spent most of my time at one of their large contracts - a large insurance corporate headquarters. Our humble work crew took up residence in a mostly unused section of the large parking garage. There was usually a half dozen of us or so assigned to the needs of the huge insurance company campus.
You find yourself working with a host of characters if you spend much time in landscape trades or perhaps a better way to say it, work blue-collar and you will find yourself shaking hands with the eccentric and often marginal class. These are the salt of earth. Or in other words, these are people that the rest of society taps to do all the dirty work and then hopes said marginals vanish into all the dark corners of culture not to be seen again until the next time the grass needs to be cut, the garbage needs to picked up, the toilet leak needs to be fixed, the....
One old boy followed a female worker of ours out of "Down South" and took up a job on our crew. Down Alabama, Texas way, the good ol' boys kept their guns in the back of their pickup truck windows. - Not acceptable in nanny-state Wisconsin. Said ol' boy on our crew delighted in keeping a BB-gun in his gun rack....keeping him constantly pulled over by the police and then released because there is apparently nothing egregious about displaying a BB-gun in your truck back window, none-the-less, they look like a real gun. I always waited with bated breath for him to be machine-gunned down by the local swat team. But day after day, he ritually pulled into our parking area with BB-gun proudly displayed in truck window.
Our crew leader was a bit of an anal retentive dude, insisting we all sit in a group at lunch and eat on-site. Even though a burgeoning community of fast-food joints was springing up within site of our hillside work assignment. It was the edge of town near the Interstate Highway. Even though some of us drove our own vehicles to the work site and others also brought out at least three company trucks to the site as well, still, we had to sit and eat our meals from lunch boxes and sack-lunches. Back at the City of Dallas, to the highest supervisional level, I was used to lunch being made into a social event of the highest culture order. Employees, supervisors, and big bosses alike, drove City vehicles to the damnest places for lunch - from the lowest barbecue hut in the barrio and ghetto to some of the fanciest lunch eateries downtown.
To spit the ridiculous eating rules of the Madison rubric, I bought a handled beer cooler that could have stored enough meals to feed the 101st Airborne Division. The cooler looked odd compared to the little sack lunches of my esteemed anal colleagues. Deep-voice Dude came out to check on us and took a second look at my giant cooler. A short time later we were miraculously allowed to pop down to the fast-food joints at lunch.
It got windy out on that hilly former farm slope. Back in those days before direct deposit we received paper pay checks. One day one of our female crew members shoved her paycheck into the tight back pocket of her work jeans. It must have worked its way out of her pocket and just before everyone met for our nanny-state lunch gathering, our crew leader unbeknownst to Tight-jeaned Chick found (luckily) her check up against the fence by our meeting spot in the parking garage. Having been a supervisor once, I breathed a sigh of relief. But, then to my horror, anal Crew-leader Dude indicated he would torment said Tight-jeaned Chick in some manor pretending the check was probably lost forever.
Having worked and supervised a diverse work forces for years, the one thing I knew you never play patty-cake with is someone's....damn paycheck. Without even thinking much about it, my admonishment to the anal Crew-leader Dude spilled out of my mouth like a Tourette's Syndrome rant. When Tight-jeaned Chick pulled up for lunch on her work scooter, the boss quickly gave her the pay check for a second time without delay or disparaging comment.
"Idiot," I thought to myself at the time regarding anal Crew-leader Dude.
But early into my second season at the landscape company, although a large outfit with hundreds of employees, it became apparent key positions were held by relatives and drinking buddies. For those naive to the blue-collar world, nepotism is a reoccurring theme.
I am always prepared to put up with "the buddy-buddy system" but a new variable had encroached into the work place of the early 1990s. George W. Bush's (the first President Bush) pesky recession spilled over into the new Clinton era and manifested itself in displaced workers. A mook came to work for us who had been laid off from Chrysler in Kenosha. The Government sent him to college to learn a new trade - in this case, landscaping. Said mook had gotten everything paid for and even placed in a job. That job was with our crew as a quasi-boss. Said mook was a dip-shit. The whole experience made me bitter toward the system. We all had to pull our own weight but the Government allowed auto plants to move to Mexico, laying off mooks, then paid their way for their supposed inconvenience.
My question: "What about the rest of us that had been biding our time working hard all along?"
After over 10 years in various venues of the landscape maintenance and park and recreation professions, I gave them a short notice and left. I had been working at the farm and hardware store on weekends part-time. They were always trying to get people to work full time. Being a multiple college town, students came and went there all the time, so an old experienced worker like myself had no trouble fitting right back into their schedule. You got to love the 1990s. Nowadays, as I write this book during the Great Recession of 2006 and onward, a poor worker can't buy a damn job.
I quite the landscape company; in fact, it would be the last time I ever would work in the profession. Almost at the same time we moved to that nifty old farm house on the edge of New Glarus leaving our wood-floored duplex in Madison behind. Whether it really was or not, it felt like a new start for me. Heide hung on yet again for another change. She has the patience of biblical Job.
I never looked back.
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)
Army First Lieutenant Nick A. Dewhirst, 25, of Onalaska, Wisconsin died on Sunday, July 20, 2008, in the Qalandar District of the Khost Province, Afghanistan. Dewhirst was killed when his convoy was attacked by enemy combatants using rocket propelled grenades and small arms fire. He was assigned to the Company Delta, 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
The Lacrosse Tribune notes Dewhirst grew up in the town of Medary and that in his younger days he had been and Eagle Scout back in 1999. He had worked as an attendant at the La Crosse Country Club not far from his home. Nick was a 2001 graduate of Onalaska High School. He was on the student council and a member of the National Honor Society. Dewhirst was friends with Adam Servasis another Onalaska graduate killed in Afghanistan in 2006 while serving as an Air Force Senior Airman. The Tribune went on to mention that after high school Dewhirst enrolled in Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, with a Reserve Officers' Training Corps scholarship. He had applied to both the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S Army Academy eventually being excepted by the Army at West Point. He was commissioned as an Army officer in 2006 and assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell.
The Fort Campbell Courier said Lieutenant Dewhirst's awards and decorations include the Army Achievement Medal; the National Defense Service Medal; the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal; the Army Service Ribbon; the Air Assault Badge; the Parachutist Badge; the Ranger Tab; the Special Operations Diver Badge; and, Weapons Qualification M4 (expert).
The Website legacy.com posted obituary information about Nick and mentions his degree at West Point was Mechanical Engineering. Nick also completed Special Forces Combat Diver Qualification at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School in Key West, Florida. After graduation from the West Point, he completed the Army Ranger Course at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was deployed to Afghanistan in March of 2008. Nick was remembered as enjoying recreational rock climbing, scuba diving, and base parachute jumping.
At the time of his death Nick Dewhirst was survived by his parents Randy and Susan Dewhirst; brothers Chad and Chase; and, grandparents Ray and Mary Dewhirst, and Mary June Weiser.
Army First Lieutenant Nick Dewhirst was the 11th Wisconsin military service person to be killed in Afghanistan since October of 2001.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
0 American and Coalition casualties in Libyan "Operation Odyssey Dawn" since March 2011
100,444 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
9,903 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,449 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1533 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
318 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
870 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
32,062 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
10,944 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
107 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
29 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
148 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
21 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
2 journalists (regional agencies) have been killed in Libya since March of 2011.
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.
