The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I was downtown the other day doing my weekly errands off-island when some Good Samaritan hustled across the gas station parking lot to tell me my hat looked like it was on its last legs and if I needed a fresh one, he knew a great place to pick one up cheap. This is a bit like the fella that asks the woman in front of him in the checkout line when her due date is … only to learn she’s not pregnant, just overweight.

A lesser man mighta taken umbrage. A lesser man mighta even been embarrassed that his sombrero looked like a scarecrow’s castoff. But I said I thought maybe my hat would last a few days longer, thanks for the concern. He didn’t seem to pick up on my subtle clues that perhaps I liked this old hat and wasn’t much interested in replacing it with some storebought doppleganger despite the fact that it would look brand spanking new. And clean. And presentable. Make a new man of its wearer. Give off a right smart image. You know, like I was a Nashville recording artist on vacation.

“They got all kinds,” he insisted. “Cheap ones too. Even though they got some real expensive ones.” I think he picked right up on the fact I didn’t look like someone who would pay $500 for a Borsalino rabbit pelt fedora. My Borsalino I found in a thrift store for two bucks, already nicely worn, comfortable as, well, an old hat.

“Right up the road,” he assured me. “Hundreds of hats. You could get a new one like yours for ten dollars.”

“A new one wouldn’t be like mine,” I said, getting a little tired of my haberdashery missionary’s unsolicited zeal. It takes some careful aging to get a hat into the condition mine was in. I said, “I notice you don’t wear one yourself. A hat, I mean.” At this, my benefactor backed up a step or two. “If it was sunny today, I might,” he explained awkwardly. “I got a straw hat like yours I wear if it’s sunny.”

I wanted to tell him if he had one like mine, I knew where he could get a better one. Instead I just thanked him for his referral. “When this one dies, I’ll give the place a look-see,” I said. I figure maybe in a few years, then I’ll go check the Goodwill. Guys like me, it’s always sunny enough to wear a well-worn hat.

Dormant Butt Syndrome occurs when the gluteus maximus muscles are not functioning properly, heaping strain on other parts of the body.
I know what you’re thinking: I make this stuff up. Butt seriously, why would I make up a disease that impugns the lifestyle of most of us down here on the idyllically slothful South End? You think I’m advocating for more of those health clubs with their machines spinning in near unison while their poor pedallers listen to books on tape or NPR rebroadcasts through their earpods?? C’mon, get a grip. This is breaking news, not a Donald Trump press release.

DBS, it’s no laughing matter. You sit on yours too long and before you realize the couch has grown tendrils up into your pant leg, you start noticing back pain, maybe some hip creakiness, then knee problems begin to crop up when you head to the fridge for another beer or more chips. How can this be? you ask yourself, knowing full well you haven’t, couldn’ t possibly, have strained any muscles. You haven’t used a muscle for years. In fact, most have atrophied to stringy vestigial shadows of their former selves. And now you have back pain? Doesn’t seem possible, doesn’t seem fair!

Dormant butt syndrome, my friend. And it’s not just here on the South End, it’s a national epidemic. Park in front of a computer screen for hours at a time, then sit in front of a 60 inch television screen for an entire evening, catch some movies and ballgames, take a break for catching up on e-mail, sit and text message all your friends, then update Facebook accounts, well, doesn’t leave much time for exercise or a walk in the park. Butt who knew the deleterious consequences of our digital lifestyles??

Granted, most of us aren’t going to change our sedentary routines. No doubt we’ll soon see butt massagers soon, rollers built into our office chairs, our lazy-boys, the cushions of our couch. Expensive, sure, but cheaper than MRI’s and surgeries. Probably be covered by health insurance as medical instruments. Watch for the ads on late night TV. Help! I’ve sat down and I can’t get up!! Now, yours for only 29.95, the amazing Catapault Chair! But wait! Order now and we’ll send you a second chair free, just add shipping and handling.

National Butt Health. Soon to get its own holiday. And not a day too soon!

Denny the Dealer and I were hunkered down in a watering hole up north and the waitress had just brought us our beers. Denny, always on the lookout for an ‘angle’, held up his hand and said, “Wait a minute. Is that what I ordered? “ The waitress didn’t know Denny, at least not yet, and she said, “Didn’t you order an IPA?” There was just enough uncertainty in her voice that Denny pronounced that no, he had definitely ordered an ESB.

You maybe never have known a boy like Denny the Dealer. He doesn’t believe in paying full price for anything. He thinks you should buy him dinner, I guess for the pleasure of his company. He will take a broken tool back to the hardware store, possibly not even the one he bought it from, and demand they replace it or give him a discount on the new one. Or on something else he wants to buy. He has a scam for everything from mailed packages to airline tickets. If you dropped him in a bazaar in Constantinople or a tourist shop in Tijuana, he’d make them sweat for any puny profit they might make off him.

He has a business that he pays virtually no taxes on. I asked him how that was even possible, naïve about the nature of corporate tax laws, and he spent half an hour describing various offshore corporations he’d created, multiple bank accounts that shifted money from one to the next so that they never showed more than $10K at some magic time for the IRS. He has money in another person’s name, underage and therefore beyond the revenuers reach. I assume he spends more time in fiduciary sleight of hand than he does in his business enterprise. You want to see capitalism in action, you need to drink with me and Denny.

I’m going to assume, for the sake of friendship, most of what Denny does is legal in a strictly tax law sense. Moral, I think we can safely say moral doesn’t weigh in on Denny’s calculus. Money, they say, is the root of all evil and maybe so, but what I know from watching folks who think money is pretty near Everything is that it usually doesn’t buy them happiness. Easy living, yeah, but it’s hard to be happy when you’re always worried someone is going to get the upper hand in your deal.

Our waitress was obviously flustered, what with screwing up Denny’s order, so she reached for his glass to take it back, dump it and get his ESB. Denny didn’t hesitate, he just offered to take the IPA and pay half price, fair is fair, he said. The waitress was considering it. At least until I said, “He’s pulling your leg. He does this everyplace we go. He ordered the IPA. He thinks it’s funny to horse around.”

When our relieved but somewhat puzzled waitress left, Denny shook his head. “I try to teach you a few tricks and what do you do? You’ll pay full price for everything, Skeeter, and lemme tell you, that’s not how the real world works. Full price is for suckers like you.” I took a long sip of my own beer. Which, being the first of the day, tasted like liquid pleasure. “Worth every penny,” I said, already knowing what Denny would say in reply.

More and more of us South Enders are losing their religion, don’t ask me why. I just read a survey that showed a quarter of us don’t believe in a Supreme Being, too bad for Donald Trump. That’s way up since the last survey. But here’s the odd part: the number of us who don’t believe in God but believe in an afterlife doubled. Faith based Heaven, I suppose, or maybe just bad logic, a trend that seems to be more and more prevalent.

Down at the Little Church in the Ravine, Rev. Paul makes it a point most every Sunday to exhort his flock to eschew sin. Live a holy life, he preaches, and if you mess up, ask the Good Lord for forgiveness. Believe on the Lord, he says, or surely Hell will follow.

Now, I may be mistaken here, but I’m guessing most of the folks who believe in an afterlife are talking about Streets of Gold, not Beelzebub’s BBQ. You don’t believe in a deity, you probably won’t buy the quaint notion of the Devil. And if you think Heaven is waiting for you no matter what, why not enjoy a little sinning while you’re waiting for the Pearly Gates to open? No punishment waiting, no purgatory for the wicked. Believe me, Pastor Paul doesn’t pound that pulpit with his ragged Bible to tell parishioners they got nothing to lose if they covet their neighbor’s wife. Go right ahead, cheat the other guy on that used car you said was running great when you know damn well the engine isn’t getting oil up in the cylinder head. You can make a little extra money and still get a reservation in the Angel Motel after your last breath.

Shirley, my neighbor who runs the Pampered Pekingese Pet Grooming service, claims she’ll be reincarnated. As a pup. The Hindu believe the Wheel rewards those who do good, but I guess now we think we get what we want, not what we deserve. Shirley better hope she doesn’t end up at the pound with all the other unwanted pets. Not everyone gets pampered in this mean old world.

We got a lot of folks on the South End making a living the hard way, meaning, they don’t work. In the pioneer days when I first scratched out a meager existence in these played out nettle farms, people survived on piece work here, odd jobs there, some bartering, some horsetrading, the usual indolent country skills. But the new folks, they do some of that, but mostly, due to some serious drug maintenance problems, they got more pressing issues. You want to maintain a heroin addiction, you probably aren’t going to commute to McDonalds and take a job as fry cook. No, it’s easier if you just steal what the neighbors got.

This is more or less what I left the city to escape. No, not jobs or employment. Neighbors stealing from neighbors. What was really sad back then was how the poor folks stole from the poor folks. Easier, I admit, to slip down the alley and come in a nearby backdoor than to drive up to the white folks’ suburbs even though the pickings would have made it more than worth the effort. Course then you have security alarms and motion sensitive cameras and a police force that patrols those tonier neighborhoods. Me, I had Dr. Gonzo.

Dr. Gonzo was a refugee of the Humane Society, part boxer, part hound of Baskerville, a fearless brute of a dog who had been abused by its previous owner who was, judging by her reaction to men, male. If you happened to be a black male, she ratcheted up her snarls about double the decibels. And if you were a fat male, she was nearly unmanageable. Frighteningly so. But if you were a black and fat male, she wanted to hurt you. She probably wanted to kill you. My assumption is her abuser might have fit that exact description and it might explain why she ended up at the pound. Her tormentor probably realized he wasn’t going to cow her and one of them had to go.

She was well known to my neighborhood. It was also well known my house wasn’t usually locked. Not with Dr. Gonzo inside. You wanted to walk in, maybe see if my TV was worth stealing, have at it and good luck. Men knocked on my door and I’d say, kicking a snarling growling Gonzo back behind me, come on in, why dontcha? “Naw man, let’s talk on the porch here,” they invariably replied. And invariably they would want to know if I’d consider selling Gonzo to them. “Maybe you’d like to get to know her better,” I’d suggest, opening the door a crack to let them see Gonzo trying to get her snapping jaws through and I’d say it doesn’t look as if she likes you, man. “How about you breed her, sell me the pups?” And I’d shake my head sadly, naw man, she’s been spayed.

I didn’t have much trouble in that high crime neighborhood even with the 10 units next door that were nothing but a breeding ground for drugs, gunrunning, sex trafficking and fencing. Still, it seemed, I don’t know, a corrosive atmosphere, a breeding ground for cynicism, a hard place to practice peaceful meditation. For both Gonzo and me. So we packed it in, bought a 1910 shack up here on the South End and made a new start, both of us. She died some years back, broke my heart. But at least she never lived so long she had to see the ghetto boys living next door once again.