The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The other day I overheard a conversation at the Diner between Fairlane Freddie and Janet Jorgenson, actually more an argument, precipitated by Fred when he complained about Stanwood upgrading its streets, putting a landscaped separation between lanes, erecting a metal and art entryway coming into town, all upgrades Fred declared were a waste of money. “My god, Freddie,” Janet shot back, “give that town some credit. They’re trying to make improvements.”

“Gimme a break,” Fred retorted hotly, sloshing coffee on the formica between them. “Like that walking trail around the sewer lagoon? You think they needed that?”

Janet shook her head and forked in a mouthful of pancake. When she finally swallowed, she asked, “You ever walk that trail?” Fred, of course, had not. “Why would I?”

“I dunno. Maybe the view of the Olympics, the Sound, the river, our island? They’re making a new park at the Ovenell farm, another by the train depot and I think one past the library, you know, that corner at the Y.”

Fred didn’t know and furthermore, Fred couldn’t care less, all a waste of time and money, he said. “Now they want to build a damn Art Center,” he practically shouted for the rest of us to hear. “Just what we need, more stupid art!”

“Just gonna draw more stupid artists.” Yeah, I said that from two tables over, happy to stir this particular pot. Janet seemed relieved to watch the argument move downstream, give her time to finish her cold pancakes. Anita, our waitress, groaned, half done refilling my coffee mug. “Wind him up,” she muttered, “all we need this morning.”

“You guys never stop,” Fairlane replied. “Took Terry’s Corner off the tax roles to build your goofy Visitor Center, run that Mother’s Day Tour that clogs traffic every year — who asked for all that? Used to be a nice rural island and Stanwood was a quiet little town. Couldn’t just leave well enough alone?”

“Aw, Fred, you know us artists, the last thing we could do would be to leave well enough alone. You drive that ’63 Ford, plenty good enough for you, but big fins and dual exhaust dinosaurs got to make way for the Jetsons’ flying cars, probably EV’s.”

“I spoze you’re all FOR that new art center,” he sneered.

“What, me?” I said. “What have you got against new growth down in the floodplain? Give it some new life, maybe draw folks down to the Pearson House, The Floyd Cultural Center, the History Museum. Hell, Fred, you could stop in at the old library, probably hate our new one on the island. Stanwoodtown is up the hill now – you want to save the old, might as well embrace the new down below.”

The couple at the table between ours, figuring they’d stumbled into a DMZ no-man’s land, hastily finished their breakfasts and headed for the safety of the cash register by the door, no point becoming collateral damage in the Culture War.

“We better stop, Fred — we’re scaring away the tourists,” I said. Janet laughed. “Pretty soon they’ll be coming to that Art Center,” she said.

“Swell,” Fred grumbled. “More damn art.”

“You’ll probably survive the shock, Fred,” I told him. Anita was going to get a big tip from me this morning….

I got a friend who has turned into a Day Trader, buying and selling stocks, ebullient that in the past year or more, the Market is running wild, setting new record highs, making him even richer than he was before. The rich, maybe you’ve heard, are getting richer. Most of consumer spending isn’t spread across the nation’s demographics equally, it’s the result of spending by the wealthy. If you think they’re worried about the cost of groceries or the price of gas, you obviously aren’t in the 1%, maybe not even the 10%. Should have maybe taken out a second mortgage and tossed it into the S&P 500. Or better yet, any of the stocks hitched to the Artificial Intelligence bet.

Folks I know who are betting their farm on the AI wave think all stocks rise on an expanding bubble. The Dutch who paid thousands of guilders for rare bulbs thought the price of tulips had no ceiling, same as the banks who collateralized shaky mortgage loans, same as the investors of the Roaring 20’s who bought on 10% margins. I’m not envious of their profits — while there are profits — I just hate the collateral damage when the bubble bursts and the economy crashes.

What goes up, I tell my friend, inevitably comes down. But he doesn’t believe that old chestnut. AI is different, he claims, nothing like the tech bubble of the 90’s, totally impervious to the laws of gravity. Sure, I reply, and rare tulips still hold their value today.

Probably time to buy Trump meme crypto, if for no other reason than to hedge the bets.

I was in the checkout line of the local pharmacy — and no, I don’t mean the Bud Hut — behind an older fella who had a joint remedy, some kind of modern snake oil guaranteed to alleviate arthritis, hair loss and lack of sexual desire. Wendy, the cashier, rang his cure-all up, something like $19.99, cheap, I guess, for a panacea. “My husband takes this too,” she told the geriatric gent. The customer nodded imperceptibly, swiped his credit card and waited for his receipt.

I’m always annoyed at folks who treat their checkout people the way they’d treat a store mannequin, just seems rude to me. The auto checkout was tailor made for these yahoos. So I asked, just to fill the awkward silence, “Well, did it work for him?” Our customer perked up at this; after all, this is close to a testimonial if not a full-fledged pharmaceutical double blind test. Wendy paused. “Jimmy says it does, so I guess it’s worth the money.” Her tone of voice suggested maybe Jimmy was BS’ing and the money was going down a rathole. “I hope that works miracles,” she said to the Arthritis Kid.

Exactly, I thought. We’re hoping for miracles at $19.99, why not throw the dice? I was over at a buddy’s house later on and asked him how his girlfriend’s broken arm was doing. You ask health questions at my age, you’re either desperate for conversation or you need counseling yourself. “Not great,” Billy said. “It isn’t healing up like it should. But … we’re taking Bone Broth.”

“Bone Broth?” I asked. “Yeah,” he answered, “lemme show ya.” Dr. Billy went to the fridge and extracted a quart jar of brown jello with lard on top. He gets bones from the local butcher, dumps them in a crockpot and boils em down for 3 days. Bone Broth!

“And you what?” I asked, “rub it on as a liniment?” “No, man,” Billy said, “you heat the liquid up and drink it.”

This, I guess, is homeopathic remedy writ strange. You got a broken bone, drink bone broth. You got hair loss, boil up some hair. Osteoporosis, well, bone broth again. Alzheimers, okay let’s not get into sweet meats. If you’re in pain, you’ll try most anything, if looks like, I get that. And maybe the placebo effect will actually kick in and work. What I don’t want to see are new ads from the pharmaceuticals for bone broth, replete with the warnings, may cause permanent rigidity, hardening of the spinal cord and permanent priapism. Course, they won’t call it bone broth, something pseudo-scientific like fibulagelomex or osteoglanulax. Or maybe just Elmer’s Glue.

Some people are born to be businessmen. They know how to promote themselves, they understand negotiation, they embody what Donald Trump calls the Art of the Deal. I wish I had a couple of strands of those genes in my DNA. My kin, my ancestors, my genepool — all I can say is they climbed down out of the trees, but they never figured out they could sell the timber or develop the real estate. Plus we never remembered how to climb back up so now folks want to sell US the damn trees.

I actually have a business. I know, hard to believe. My right-leaning Republican relatives and in-laws shake their heads sadly to think I’m the only one in the two families who represents their bedrock GOP values of entrepreneurial get-up-and-go, job creation, small business struggles, all those virtues they hold dear. I sell goods. I buy materials, fashion them into art and then I have to sell the product. American? Well, it sticks in their throats, but yeah, as apple pie. Mom and country. Bootstrap success story. You might suppose, after 35 years, I’d be pretty good at it. I just made a stained glass entryway window for some new arrivals on the South End. Even though I’m cheaper than any glass shop in the Pacific Northwest … and even though my stuff is original artwork … I ended up giving them a discount. And they’re rich. You tell me what’s wrong with that picture.

I bought a new truck a few years ago when my old one almost caused me to miss a huge commission for a public art project down in Portland. You think I negotiated a lower price or argued for some ‘extras’? If you thought that, you don’t know me. All I asked my salesman was sell me the damn truck sitting out there in the lot, the one without any bells or whistles, and don’t screw around, I want to leave here ASAP, I don’t want to play the game, I don’t want the sales manager showing me an invoice proving you aren’t making any money on the deal, I don’t want to hear that bullshit. Yes, I’ll pay full price. No, I don’t want to take it for a test drive. Yes, I’m a complete idiot.

But …. I’m an idiot who would rather pay the full monte than get down in the pit and wrassle for a few dollars. I’m not going to lie and say money is beneath me. I’m frugal to a fault. I’m my Depression-era parents’ kid. I shop mostly at Goodwills, I buy Chinese, I’m so stingey I squeak. Money comes hard and it leaves hard too.

Sales is a tough job, at least for the likes of me. Buyer beware? I don’t think so. For me, it’s seller beware.

Capitalism succeeds because it combines two primary drives in the human brain: greed and the urge NOT to work for someone else. On the South End most of us tried our hands at employment but came up a little short. Short of a work ethic, short of money, short of tolerance for a Boss. So we did what most desperate, unemployed people do. We started our own business.

Any good STARTING YOUR OWN CORPORATION FOR THE COMPLETE IDIOT book will tell you under-capitalization is the main harbinger of Failure in 90% of startups. Obviously none of us down here bought the book, probably couldn’t afford it. “It takes money to make money.” Page 2, Chapter 1. Folks just figure, I guess, they’ll buy a couple of yaks, breed em, then sell the little yaksters to a clamoring public. They don’t really factor in the yak feed, the vet bills, the yak barn and the yak fences. And they NEVER factor in the publicity campaign to create a viral fever for WANTING or NEEDING a yak. Maybe many yaks.

The other thing they don’t calculate in is how much work self-employment entails. Without overtime. Without benefits. You’re supposed to trade off working for Cap’n. Bligh in return for slaving 80 hours a week for Mr. Wonderful, yourself. Course Mr. Wonderful isn’t issuing paychecks at the beginning. He has yak bills to pay before he pays himself and the debts are growing deeper than yak droppings out in the barnyard.

So it’s little wonder us entrepreneur types, us Job Creators, us Captains of Industry, end up broke, disillusioned and depressed, our dreams shattered, our shacks mortgaged, our divorce rates sky high.

But! By god, we’re South Enders and South Enders don’t quit! Well, okay, we gave up on our capitalist fantasies of entrepreneurial riches. But we stayed true to our vow never to work for the Man again, never to be a cog in the well-greased machinery of some #@*&!!^# company, no sir! If we have to live poor, so be it. If we have to live by our wits, even if that’s a SERIOUS disadvantage, okay. And if anyone out there is looking for a very nice herd of cute yaks, I think we can help you with YOUR dream.