The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I went shopping this morning. Not a favorite pastime of mine, but a man has to do what a man has to do and if pushing a cart around a box store is required, count me in. Reluctantly. So with gritted teeth I cruised the fluorescent aisles with my other fellow sufferers. Oh, I KNOW some folk enjoy the pleasures of shopping, the surprise of a new sale, the shared consumerism of our neighbors. Call me Curmudgeon.

The first store I needed to hit was mercifully empty of cart-wielding maniacs this early on a Monday morning. The nice couple in front of me had a cute dog, not a service dog, just a pet mongrel they felt bad leaving in the pickup on a cold day, why not bring it in leashless and let it wander with the rest of us mutts. It immediately took a dump right in the middle of aisle # 4. Just like a walk in the park, the hound must have figured. The couple called its name, Jersey or Jerky, something like that and all three left the steaming mess behind.

Even out by me on the scofflaw South End, folks carry a little scoop bag for their critter’s leavings, just a neighborly gesture in these gentrified times. At my park I caretake a few folks understand the ‘poop bag’ concept — they’ll bag it then toss the bag onto the grass before they leave. It must be a harder concept than I figured and maybe eventually they’ll get the hang of it.

The couple in my store, I don’t think they’ll make that leap at all, ever. Someone else can clean up after their pooch, it’s not their problem, it’s not their store, it’s not anything to worry about and anyway they have shopping to do, no time for Turd Patrol. Me, I drift toward the pneumatic exit doors and out to the littered parking lot, my truck and on to the next big box. Like I said, a man has to do what some might not. But I never dreamed shopping included dodging dog doo.

This past summer a buddy and I were hauling up from the crab fields out front, bitching about our current President’s latest idiocy as we were wont to do almost incessantly, when we met Ken, my neighbor across the road, and in a burst of enthusiastic rancor I decided to share our political animosities with him, starting with, “Well, not really sure what your politics are, Ken, but Dave and I were just …” As most people know by the time they’re in long pants, assumptions about politics or religion are, what we call on the South End, a slippery slope. So naturally Ken pointed out that he and his mizzus had voted Trump/Pence, stopping my screed in mid-screech, sending Dave and me and two buckets of crabs home kind of embarrassed. Or at least as humiliated as two crab killers are capable of.

But just before we exiled ourselves Ken asked if I would participate in our local library’s new podcast series he explained he was putting together. Possibly it was out of a chagrined fluster brought on by our curtailed political gaffe, but in a moment of weakness, I said yeah, sure and immediately put it out of mind and returned with Dave to our pleasurable ranting and an agreeable afternoon of crab mutilation and devouring.

Well, maybe I forgot about my promise, but Ken didn’t, so when he called a few months back, I drove to the Sno-Isle headquarters, entered a state of the art sound booth, put on big cushy headphones, sat close to a very sensitive microphone our Band would dearly love to own and let Ken and his cohort, Jim Hills, ask anything they wanted. They weren’t the Mueller investigation, thankfully, and better yet, they were very nice fellows who were sweetly gentle with this old codger.

For any of you out there in Cyberville who’ve read more than a couple of these blog sketches of Skeeter’s, you probably notice I don’t talk much about my so-called career as a stained glass guy. So you can maybe imagine my argument with myself about injecting a podcast interview into the Skeeter Diaries. But it’s New Years Day, the year of our Lord 2019, and I’m a tad hungover and sleep deprived from last night’s late hour bash, meaning my willpower is weak and my logic flawed. If this podcast seems long and boring, you are probably right … but in my defense, I blame Trump. Unless of course you voted Trump/Pence. In which case I have no excuses.

For the foohardy, here’s the link:
https://blog.sno-isle.org/news/podcast/episode-12-the-art-of-breaking-glass-with-jack-archibald/