Mike Ruzek and Bonnie Rietz weren’t there.

Thursday, September 16, 1999

Mike Ruzek and Bonnie Rietz weren’t there.

That’s a fact.

When Spruce Up Austin volunteers assembled last Saturday for the last major project of the year, two of the organization’s most well-known members were missing in action.

Speaking for all the Spruce Up Austin volunteers, who were present, I would like to say we were aghast.

Arguably, Ruzek is the backbone of the organization and quite possibly the neck bone, which is connected to the head bone and so on.

Rietz, of course, is the mayor of all of Austin and has by now made everyone forget old what’s-his-name, who preceded her for 50 or 60 years.

Who was there? Yours Truly, of course, and Susan Wageman, Jerry McCarthy and Dennis Maschka.

Thank God we had the soldiers of HHC Detachment I 2nd Battalion 135th Infantry of the Minnesota National Guard.

Spruce Up Austin has been planting trees in Austin since Mike Ruzek was a short, stocky man and before Bonnie Rietz was mayor. The organization has planted over a million trees in its history. Even the Great Storm of June 1998 couldn’t make a dent in the forest volunteers have planted in the city.

There’s nothing like the feeling you get digging a round hole in the ground and placing a tree in it and then standing back and wondering if it’s straight or not and if it will be there a week from now.

Me? I’m a mulcher fan myself. Truly, mulch and its proper placement is the secret to any successful tree planting. It is, to be sure, no simple task. Proper placement, including distance from the trunk as well as circumference around the tree as well as strictly observed depth measurements must be placed.

If you don’t have time for that, all you have to do is dump a couple of buckets around the darn tree and move on to the next one.

Volunteers planted, oh, between four and five hundred trees along the Oakland Place Northeast exit ramp from Interstate 90 near the 21st Street intersection by the National Guard Armory across the street from the Texaco station and near Austin Municipal Airport last Saturday afternoon.

The local National Guard unit has its own community service program and it was a drill weekend for the soldiers so they helped.

Boy did they help.

At one point, it looked like the D-Day invasion as the camouflage-dressed soldiers descended on the work site.

First Lt. Jason Griffith commanded the unit. He has a twin brother, Jeremy, who is also a First Lieutenant. It’s impossible to tell them apart.

The National Guard will soon exercise good sense and separate them and send Jason to Albert Lea to command that unit and leave Jeremy behind.

Ms. Wageman was duly impressed by the soldiers, who went about their jobs enthusiastically. Either that or she spotted a hunk or two among the bunch.

Jerry McCarthy, who is a very important person with Austin Utilities – his mother told me so -became confused at one point. McCarthy spotted six soldiers standing around a hole in the ground staring intently at something.

"Hey!" he said, "Are you guys utility workers?"

Would I lie about something like that?

Dennis Maschka, probably the most powerful person in all of Austin behind the mayor, city administrator, director of public works, seven council members, five park board members and his wife, had a field day. He is, as they say in the military, ex-military, having served 20 years in the Army National Guard himself.

Boy, can he tell war stories, like the time they short-sheeted a dentist at Camp Ripley or the time they tied the laces on the boots of their company commander. Too bad, the boots were empty at the time, but that just goes to show you what the lack of Army intelligence will do to a covert operation.

Me? Well, I kept moving. Working tirelessly to plant trees. I had to. My grandson was there watching me. He caught a frog with the help of a soldier and the pair spent the rest of the day interrogating it.

There was one tense moment, when one of the soldiers paused in his work and removed a combat knife at least 2-feet long from his duty belt.

"Either you’re from Adams, or related to a county commissioner that I write about frequently, or have a grandparent on the Austin School Board," I asked him from a distance.

He only smiled back at me.