Date with fate - post 2 - Crying 16-year-old Buick-girl vs old four-door Ford

18 July 2007

Date with fate - post 2 - Crying 16-year-old Buick-girl vs old four-door Ford

This entry was posted on 7/18/2007 1:30 AM and is filed under Fate Fairies.

The prevailing wisdom in Janesville for as long as I can remember is that our stop and go lights are in sync. The mantra has been for decades, "Catch one green light and you can get through them all down on Milwaukee Street." Nothing is farther from the truth. They are actually set out of sync to slow the flow of cars - "traffic calming." People have bought into the juxtaposed logic ("Wisconsin Logic") for so long they actually think the lights are in sync. And, like a well-kept family secret - people get cynical when they finally realize one of the kids came from the milk man so to speak. 

I must have been in Fourth grade or so. Mom and Dad were carting Grandma around in our old four-door Ford car one afternoon. She could not drive. This was a periodic ritual. Even forty-five years ago the stop and go lights in Janesville annoyed me. Grandma and I were in the back seat as usual. She was going on about some doings in Janesville. She loved Janesville. Grandpa had moved the family there in the 1920s so he could work at General Motors. He died shortly after that and my uncles had to finish building the house. It seems like I am just about the only one left from the whole crowd in this story. Mom and Dad were in the front seat having one of their usual chats. Suddenly a car careened over one of the ubiquitous Janesville hills on a street to our side and slammed on its brakes at the stop sign. The car came inches from lambasting our car in a T-bone wreck. I could see the bumper of the car out my window. It was so close to our car I could see my own reflection in its shinny chrome. Grandma was looking out the other window as she prattled on about something. Mom and Dad were oblivious as the action was over their right shoulders by now. I could see the face of the sixteenish year old girl at the wheel of the screeching car. She was crying about something - no doubt what ever it is sixteen year old girls cry about. 

I remember being so nonchalant about it. Growing up on a dairy farm gives one such a "some you win, some you lose," outlook in life. I did not scream or warn the others in our car. I just thought for a couple seconds and remember saying as if it were yesterday, "God, I hate Janesville." Grandma looked truly hurt and began a monologue on how wonderful Janesville had been to her considering they used to live in a shack in Harvard. The rest of the way to Grandma's house and then all the way back to Lima, I was likewise lectured by my mother on the nuances of thinking before I spoke.

I never did tell them we all almost kicked the bucket that afternoon - killed in a gory mess of tangled metal and glass - smashed to bits by a crying sixteen year old in her daddy's Buick. 

This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Private First Class Ryan M. Jerabek, 18, of Hobart who was killed in Ramadi, Iraq on April 6, 2004. Jerabek was in the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. He was killed in what has been described and a long firefight against insurgents. Ryan was the Fifteen Wisconsin service member to die in Iraq. He had been in Iraq less than a month. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Pfc. Jerabek enlisted in the delayed entry program for the Marine Corps in his junior year in high school. He did his boot camp in San Diego in July, 2003.  Ryan is survived by his mother and father Rita and Ken Jerabek. Dad Ken Jerabek served in the Army during Vietnam. 

3,618 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

26,695 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring 2003.

76 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

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

Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; and, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.