The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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.

Down at the Norse Village in Stanwoodopolis the liquor store has sat shuttered ever since the voters of Washington decided we should get government out of the business of selling alcohol. Actually most of the Norse Village is pretty much out of business. Got a Dollar Store and a laundromat, all of it anchored now by the ever resilient Uff-Da Shoppe, purveyors of fine Scandihoovien knick-knacks.

I noticed recently the Chapel of Praise has moved into the vacated liquor store. We all know it’s not the building that’s important, it’s the Spirit that moves inside. Or spirits in this case. But … ever since I moved here in 1977 the only liquor store in town was this building and this location. And now it’s a House of God, a concrete block sanctuary for folks the liquor store probably brought to their inebriated knees. With a bottle, now a hymnal.

Bernie Slivovitz, my neighbor down the highway, is a newly minted convert. He’s been pretty religious about his AA meetings at the toxic mold county-run Blue Building, formerly the Senior Center, every Thursday night and now he’s washed in what he calls the Blood of the Lamb. Sounds like a meatpacking house to me, but I don’t make light of Bernie’s newfound salvation. His drinking cost him more than a couple of jobs plus a wife and his kids still won’t talk to him, they aren’t as forgiving as Jesus. They think his sobriety, like always, is as temporary as the rain and wind stopping in November. The wagon he’s riding, driven by Jesus or Bobby Ryder, his best friend who takes him to the grocery store after the last DUI, will knock him to the ditch sooner, not later.

Maybe so, but Bernie’s doing okay so far. A little righteous for my cynical tastes, but hey, you think you found the Right Path, you hate to see your pals and family wandering, lost and forsaken. The road is narrow, Bernie’s pastor tells him. And for those who stray, get ready for the Big BarBQ in the sky.

“It does seem strange,” Bernie confides to me one day last week over a cup of black coffee and his ever present cigarette, “to attend services in the old liquor store. But ya know, the Lord moves in mysterious ways.”

Being a South Ender, I couldn’t agree more.

The South End Suds and Duds, our local laundromat and gossip center, advertises as OPEN 24/7, but for us Maytagless residents, we know it’s open maybe only 5 or 6 days, the other two they’re closed for repairs and plumbing catastrophes now that Wanda , the current owner, lost her husband/repair guy to Cindy, one of the regulars, at least until she ran off for a new life in Phoenix. Wanda took Fred’s betrayal hard, especially considering Cindy was young enough to be their daughter. If she was a bitter chainsmoking woman before, she doubled down after. And consequently lost interest in the Suds and Duds.

I happened to be washing a week’s worth of dirty clothes and sheets when our washer refused to drain. Wanda was interviewing Tommy Wilson for the position of Head Roto-Rooter. Tommy barely knows which end is the working end of a toilet plunger, but Wanda obviously was short on applicants. “I got a guy yesterday,” she said through a haze of Pall Mall smoke, “probably illegal. I said I’d need to see a green card. He could barely speak English. Said he had a family to feed. I told him I was hiring him, not his whole damn family.”

Tommy swore. “Takin our jobs. They’ll own America before long.” Tommy’s jobs disappeared a long time ago. If Wanda hired him, it would break a streak of decades. “We need to deport these people,” he growled darkly. “Just leeches on the rest of us.” Wanda shot him a long exclamation point of smoke. For once I kept my mouth shut. It’s hellish enough doing the laundry here without debating the owners and clientele. I vowed to get my washer fixed ASAP or die trying.

Tommy lasted about half a week, near as I could tell, probably until the first breakdown. Wanda hired an hombre named Carlos to replace him. They say he can fix about anything. Except maybe Wanda’s broke heart and bitter life. I bought a used washer at the 2nd hand appliance place up north. A very polite Hispanic kid helped me load it into my truck. I noticed he spoke perfect English.

With this next presidential election cranked up about two years ahead of the Big Vote, I’ve been thinking about another round of debates we should have between the Job Creators and us Takers. The Pope’s been in town this weekend, talking about the obligation of a society — or a religion — to take care of the poor and the sick. Seems like the decent, the moral, thing to do, he says. Course, this makes him a socialist. A ‘taker’ too if you figure his salary’s paid from tithes.

I was just in my local Haggen grocery store. They bought about 150 Safeway and Albertson stores this spring, figuring, I guess, they would create thousands of jobs overnight. Now they’re closing stores, laying off thousands and applying for bankruptcy protection. Job Takers, looks like to me.

VW just got caught fudging its emission control tests. Put in a little software to fool the regulators, make it look like their diesel engines were clean as whistles. Now they’re going to end up either going down the Rabbit Hole or, best case, downsizing when the lawsuits and the fines reach many billions of dollar and sales dive. Job Takers, you ask me.

I’m a small businessman myself. Occasionally I even create jobs. Been awhile, since the Great Recession knocked me back on my heels, the one where the financial sector played a little fast and loose with our money. Cost me a little, cost the country plenty. Job Takers, if anyone wants my opinion.

Capitalism is fine with me — I got my little business and it’s given me a livelihood that pays the rent. But you know and I know and the Pope does too, the game is rigged. The winners make the rules and okay, nobody thinks they’re fair, except maybe the winners, but let’s take care of the losers. Let’s think of it as the cost of doing business. If government is only there to rig the game, the Big Boys can do it on their own. Maybe that’s why they hate government — it’s just a waste of their money.