[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/audio-johnny-appleseed-in-the-garden-of-eden.mp3[/podcast]audio — johnny appleseed in the garden of eden
Down at Jolene’s South End Boutique and Spa, the ladies come for hair repair and a weekly update on gossip. The B&S is conveniently located just down the blacktop from the Diner so while their menfolk pile on another layer of winter cholesterol, the women can slide in for a touch-up. Jolene and her cosmetologically adept staff — meaning Wanda and Ronald — offer everything from henna highlighting to full perm. And, of course, like most retail establishments on the capitalist frontline here on the South End, they offer everything from local artworks and gifts to a plentiful assortment of salon products for the woman in search of a temporary bulwark against gravity and age.
In other words it’s a fine environment to get things off your chest. Jolene is adept with a scissors and a necessary brake when the ‘unburdening’ gets excessive, but she knows, like most of us on the frontier of a receding civilization, the bitch sessions are not only cathartic, they’re as close to entertainment as we’ll get in the daytime. Subjects range from Jolene’s no-account sister-in-law’s messy affairs to why there’s no damn holiday in America celebrating a woman. Because men make the damn holidays, that’s the short and not so sweet of it… Ronald might pipe in there’s none for gay men either but a moment later, scissors snipping like a crab on steroids, he’ll be off on a tangent about so and so’s snide comment about his new nose ring. The salon is as abuzz with snide comments as it is with hairsprays and clippers. Us men rarely pick up the missus there, and if we do, the place goes eerily silent.
Two Toke Tom has his hair coiffed by Ronald. It changes color every month or two, blue streaks substituted for red locks. One of the boyz at the Diner asked him what they talked about in there, like it was the Rosicrucians meeting in a graveyard after midnight. Two Toke just smiled his Cheshire Cat stoned smile, put a hand to sizzling hot purple stripe and said wistfully, Girl Talk.
If I want to keep abreast of current events, it might be time I got my own south end’s trimmed down at Jolene’s. But I probably won’t tell the boyz…
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/audio-detroit-resurgence-on-the-south-end.mp3[/podcast]audio — detroit resurgence on the south end
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/audio-version-north-to-alaska1.mp3[/podcast]audio version —- north to alaska
Skeeter’s headed north to Anchorage on a job expedition, trains, planes, automobile and dogsled. Wish him luck! And pray for the dogs…. Meanwhile, scroll down the blogsite for some of those you might have missed if you need a ‘fix’. He’ll be back, with or without a job and frostbite, in a couple of days….
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/audio-version-tv-nation.mp3[/podcast]audio version — tv nation
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/audio-version-for-sale-real-cheap-greece.mp3[/podcast]audio version — for sale real cheap — greece
Someone asked me recently if I was one of those xenophobic yahoos who hate seeing newcomers roll in to the South End with their yachts and their 40 foot travel trailers and their McMansion bluff homes. I said I think you got me confused for someone else, my evil twin maybe. If my curmudgeonly attitude has confused me with my doppleganger sibling, I apologize to all my new immigrant neighbors, the tired, the not so poor, those dot.com masses, yearning to breathe free the salty seabreeze we share. Because, you see, I’m an immigrant too.
Oh I know there are plenty of Old Timers proud of the fact they were born here, raised here and will no doubt fall of their milking stool with a heart attack someday. Their parents and their grandparents stayed put. Their names are now our road signs and their legacy is that they were immobile. My interrogator, once we established my correct identity, asked how long I’d lived on these shores. Well, sir, about half my life, I said, which, he judged by the grey in my beard and the senility in my thinking, to be a very long spell indeed.
I don’t have a gate to close behind me now that I’m an Old Timer myself. Wouldn’t if I did. I believe in cultural cross pollination —- makes life a lot more interesting to have neighbors from all over, from all walks of life and all points of view. Those folks who came early and stayed late, who raised crops and families, who never dreamed of greener grass ….. well, good on em. They’re the same folks who made Stanwood what it is today and we’ll honor them down at the Historical Society all right. But we all hitched up the Toyota conestoga and then stayed for our own reasons. Just like all our ancestors did when they left Europe and Scandinavia and Asia and Africa and Mexico. We’re all immigrants and when we start getting uppity about our pioneer kin, go sit with a member of the Tulalips or the Stilly or the Swinomish. As for us, the Southendomish, we got the gate open, the door unlocked and we’ll leave the light on for the next wayfaring stranger.
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/CLICK-TO-HEAR-occupy-your-head.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR —- occupy your head