Interesting contrast in subject delineation between Tom's point of view and the opinions apparently held by Marin and Peter. Tom has referred to social/political action and effect only with respect to his personal situation. While Marin and Peter have discussed the effects on all of us as a whole.
Probably not a Rover topic, but interesting none the less. (especially after a few beers on a hot day :-)
Bryan
62 88
70 109 "Genie"
On Thu, 31 May 2001, Tom Gross wrote:
>
> Ok that's it. I've listened to this crap long enough from Olgive and Faure.
> I worked for the government, United States Forest Service, as a fire fighter
> until I was 39. I don't recall feeling particularly fat or underworked
> after pulling 24 or 48 hour shifts digging hand line in steep mountain
> terrain, breathing smoke that seared my lungs. I was burned over once. I
> don't remember feeling coddled when I wondered if that final roiling,
> broiling, coppery colored cloud of dust and smoke was going to be hot enough
> to kill me. I don't remember feeling particularly lazy when I was running 5
> miles a day so that I could be in good enough shape to last through 45
> minutes of initial attack on fires in the Sonoran Desert in the summer
> before I got sick from the heat. I don't remember looking around and seeing
> too many slackers on the line.
>
> My father was a non-union carpenter in Phoenix, Arizona (a "right-to-work"
> state) until the day he said piss on it, and retired at 63. He was grateful
> for unions so that the wages paid to non-union carpenters would be a little
> more than what they would have been had there not been unions. He worked
> hard and got laid off at 55 after an idiot who had enough money to buy the
> business where he worked, but not enough brains to keep it afloat ran it
> into the ground. There wasn't any health insurance for him, my mom and the
> 4 kids still at home while he scrambled to look for work at his age. If
> he'd been in a union, he'd have had health insurance. Today he'd at least
> have had some protection thanks to those bleeding-heart tax-and-spend
> liberals who worked for COBRA.
>
> In 1966, when I was 18, and just out of high school, my father got me a job
> working at the mobile home factory where he worked. About 2 weeks into my
> new job I stuck my middle and index fingers into a radial arm saw. Most of
> it was my fault, but some of it was due to an incorrectly set up saw.
> Afterall, you can get a couple more inches of cutting travel if you set the
> backstop back under the blade a little farther. That way you don't have to
> buy a bigger saw. Think of it, I might not be able to flip off Faure and
> Olgive with the short middle finger if there had been an OSHA around in
> those days.
>
> You know boys, "Survival of the fittest." has its place, but humans are
> conscious beings. We can see that maybe the carnage left from laissez faire
> in an industrial society may not be in the best interests of everybody, and
> certainly not in the interests of those that aren't fit enough.
>
> So, please keep your warmed over Ronald "S-head" Reagan rhetoric off a list
> that's supposed to be about keeping our vehicles going down the road.
>
> I apologize to the list for this rant, but these guys don't seem ever to get
> called on this stuff.
>
> Tom Gross
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