FROM THE TIME Bob Briggs was a kid, what always thrilled him most was the romance of operating heavy equipment—the big machines that made roads and dug holes and moved steel beams, that got jobs done and kept the world moving. The fascination never left him. It was part of the reason that the then-23-year-old Briggs enlisted in the National Guard in 1992, after the first Gulf War, as a combat engineer and equipment operator. And it was certainly the reason he chased after, and eventually won, what he calls his "dream job," as a road maintenance worker with the Iowa Department... More >>>