The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Judge Jack was kicking himself. Down at the South End Senior Center a sculpture they’d thought had been donated 12 years ago was now in Limbo. The donator’s brother had seen it there, seen it for the first time, and since they had owned it when they ran their restaurant into a backwash bankruptcy, he now wanted it back. The Center had grown fond of the carved basswood dolphin over the years and they were more than reluctant to give it back. Statue of limitations, apparently….

What to do, what to do??? Turn it over to an arbitrator, of course, some poor sap who would willingly step into the vise. Who you gonna call? Judge Jack. And Jack had said naively, sure, he’d mediate. Now he regretted it. No King Solomon decision here, he soon learned to his dismay. Someone was going to be sorely disappointed and he would take the fall, maybe lose a friend. “Let em flip a coin,” Two Toke Tom advised. “The Gods of Fate, my friend. Better than the judicial system, you ask me.” Two Toke, naturally, thought a septic system was superior to the judicial, having been harassed for most of his so-called adult life over recreational preferences and underground agriculture. Two Toke was legendary for a life of minor cannabis crime and he was a man who held a grudge.

Judge Jack sipped his latte thoughtfully. Tom was usually in geosynchronous orbit a bit too far out to take seriously, but he had a point. Flipping a coin might be the way to go. Nobody right, nobody wrong, no judge hung on his own petard. Just bad luck calling that head over tails. Way of the world. Keep the dolphin, lose the dolphin. Jeez, who cares when the Middle East is collapsing into sectarian war? Just art, after all and Judge Jack knew better than most that art in corporate America was worth about what bitcoins were on the South End. And sinking fast.

Flip a coin and walk away. “How you gonna rule, Judge?” Tom smirked over his coffee. Jack shook his head sadly, shoved his mug into the center of the table. “Refill?” Brenda asked, holding the coffee pot, working the tables. Jack said mournfully, “Hell if I know, Brenda. Come back in five minutes. I got to give it more thought.”

Tom fairly howled. He slapped the table. “Hit me again, Brenda.”

My shack has ghosts. Poltergeists. Gremlins. Whatever you care to call the little demons that are turning my lights off intermittently, then turning them back on. I don’t really believe in phantasms, but I know my lights are flickering off, then going off completely, then later suddenly snapping back to life. It’s disconcerting, I do know that.

I pulled the breakers outside, replaced them and for awhile, they seemed to work. But only for a day or so. Now the lights are turning themselves on and off again. It’s driving me batty. Yesterday I tore into the walls, jerking out switches and outlets, looking for a loose wire, a faulty switch, a connector come undone. So far nothing…. Now more lights are turning themselves off, turning themselves on. I was convinced there was a logical explanation, but more and more I’m starting to wonder.

I wake up every day to strange stories in the news. Sexual harassment, Russian probes, Senatorial races with a bigot and child predator, lies and faux news, it never ends, just drives me crazy. The nation seems stuck in a reality meltdown where paranoia reigns and obvious lies are uttered without embarrassment. I need meds. Lithium, valium, anti-psychotics, whatever it takes to reduce the brain-fever. The truth is flickering on and off. The news is driving me insane. Faux news, real news, on and off, on and off, day after day.

Today the lights in the house went off. I checked the fuse box and nothing was amiss. No breakers were OFF, but the power was. To half the room I’m in right now. Half on, half off. I’m sure it has a logical explanation. I’m sure an electrician could explain this phenomenon in a nano-second. The truth is out there somewhere. But somewhere isn’t here.

I shut off the power entirely to the shack finally. I turn it on when I’m down there working, but I’m afraid to keep it on when I leave the building, something might spark and the place will go up in flames. I should probably do that with the news, just turn it off, but I’m afraid the country will go up in smoke if I don’t pay attention. Am I crazy? Are we all going crazy? Maybe I need to turn off all the lights once and for all. Before they turn themselves off. Except that seems illogical. Doesn’t it??????????

So the phone rings early this morning and since I don’t have Caller ID, I answer it with my usual Hello, no clue who’s wanting to talk at me. I know, I’m the last man in the industrialized nations of the world who doesn’t have Caller ID so you’re thinking I deserve what I get when I pick up. The price you pay for being a Luddite, I guess.

The too cheerful voice on the other end starts right in with how am I today and I say I’m just hunky-dory and she says how glad she is I’m not the last person she talked to who was as cranky as her mother-in-law but before I can slide an answer in edgewise she’s off and running how she and the good folks for some breast cancer something or other are trying to do good in this miserable world, trying to save lives, trying to … I try my best to slip in and tell her we have our own charities we … trying to save the planet from disease and misfortune and would we help in some small way if they …. I make another attempt to … just send us a letter of commitment, nothing would be too small, anything would ….

Finally I just talk over her, fully aware that now I’M THE CRANKY MOTHER-IN-LAW FROM HELL WHO WON’T SAVE WOMEN’S BREASTS FROM THE RAVAGES OF CANCER!!, the curmudgeon who won’t write a check for some measly sum too small to pay for their stamps and letterheads even, who would rather give to some other less worthy organization, who …

And I realize in mid-apology for my crappy life … she’s hung up and moved on to the next name on her list. No more small talk, no appreciative mumbling how we all give in our own small way, no goodbye, just a phone gone dead. So now I’m not only feeling bad turning down what may very well be a legitimate organization dedicated to stopping cancer in its tracks, I’m pissed off. Great, just flippin great.

This isn’t the first time I’ve found myself in this position, feeling aggrieved and angry, but it’s going to be the last time. No more listening to solicitations from now on. No! I’m channeling the last caller’s mother-in-law from here on out. And unless I miss my guess, she’s probably a nice old lady….

Every blue moon or so a new entrepreneurial startup appears in the sleepy hollows of the South End. A computer repair shop stuck out a shingle ten years ago, some techie kid who figured the retirees would need his skills first time their desktop Dell froze up — and he was right. Trouble was, there aren’t enough of us old timers. There was that dog groomer place, the Pampered Pooch, who specialized in poodle pompadours but quit shortly after Jenny Winesack’s fox terrier took issue with the jetted bubble bath and bit her on the face, nearly taking out an eye. The neighbors claimed the terrier was vicious even without the water torture treatment and advised her to sue Jenny, but she said no, she guessed she just wasn’t the Dog Whisperer she’d thought she was.

So when I saw the wooden sign down past Tyee Store nearly to the Head where the road hairpins back north toward our place, I shook my head, figuring Ralph’s Old Time Tonsorial Emporium would last a month or two. I also figured I ought to get myself a trim before the place closed its doors forever and so I rode my bike in one sunny day down the long overgrown driveway into the nettle festooned interior, surprised to discover Ralph had added a room off the old Stuart place where he’d installed an old time hydraulic barber chair, a double basin porcelain sink and even a vintage barber pole spinning red white and blue on its axis by the door.

Little Jimmy was in the chair and Fairlane Fred was sitting his turn. “Take a seat, won’t be long, I cut faster’n a logger on meth,” Ralph, I presumed, said in greeting. I took off my hat and joined the crowd. The conversation was lively, political and heated enough for my liking. The cut was fair and the price too. “Come back,” he said, sweeping my locks into a metal dustpan, shaking the apron for Big Walter who’d come in behind me. “I will,” I said, and I have. And damn if Ralph’s Old Time Tonsorial Emporium didn’t make a go of it, despite all odds.

Some of us layabouts at the Poker Parlor were trying to think up something special for an upcoming 4^th of July celebration.  We figured we got so many Vets down this way the Diner might as well declare itself a VFW South End Auxilliary.  And since most of them are vintage car guyz too, they could hold their own annual Independence Day Parade from Camano Head to the Elger Bay Store.  I, of course, wanted to just use these militiamen as an excuse to secede from the Island, but cooler heads prevailed.  As usual.

Two Toke Tom served in Viet Nam and now is pretty much anti- every war.  Jimmy Z, who’s old enough to be Tom’s old man, fought the Japanese in WW2.  Tom thinks Jimmy’s still fighting em and maybe so, but I notice Jimmy driving a Toyota pickup now even though he swore for 60 years he’d never buy a ‘Jap Car’.  Baghdad Bill fought in the second Iraq War and Big Larry just got back two years ago from Afghanistan.  Jerry spent a year in Korea and frostbit a couple of fingers he wishes he had back, but he still can play a mean guitar.  We even got Crazy Eddie who ‘liberated’ Grenada.  We’re missing Somalia and Panama and Bosnia, but with all the newcomers rolling in, we may cover those too eventually.

Sometimes the boyz argue among themselves about those wars and sacrifice and what patriotism really means at the Friday night poker game we’ve been running since 1986 down at the Marina and Bait Shop.  Two dollar limit on bets, no limit on alcohol.  The pots don’t do much damage, but single nettle Daddle Distillery moonshine sometimes does.  I sit in with these war-hardened patriots most Fridays and serve as their patsy and their sometime referee, the one who never served even in peacetime.  Or what Two Toke calls a draft dodging, student deferred, flag burning, Summer of Love hippie protester.  He takes great joy in telling me I would’ve loved the smell of napalm in the morning over there on the Delta.  Jimmy Z chimes in how his platoon could’ve won Viet Nam single-handed although Jimmy never once has told us one iota the hell that must have been Iwo Jima.  But he’s the one who puts a liver spotted hand on Bill’s arm whenever Bill gets overwhelmed by memories of buddies lost in the HumVee he was driving when it was blown off the road to the airport in Baghdad.

We’ve fought too many wars, I think, before realizing I’ve said it out loud.  I see by their pinched lips and averted eyes I won’t get an argument tonight.  Patriotism comes in all uniforms, even no uniform at all.  Big Larry finally breaks the swelling silence, pushes a handful of quarters into the pot and says, real quiet, “I’m willing to spend a couple bucks, Skeeter, to see if you got more than bluff in this hand.”  Grateful to change the subject, I say, “Name of the game, Big.  Read em and weep.”