The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

If you were to ask your neighbor how he or she or them thought the country was doing these days, it probably wouldn’t surprise you if they replied Terrible.  Covid still menacing us, monkeypox making the news, abortion banned in most of the states now, mass murders by deranged gunmen, war in Ukraine, Supreme Court threats to bypass precedent on more personal liberties, voter suppression, the resurgence of racism, a deadlocked Congress, income inequality, gas prices at record highs, apathy toward the January 6^th insurrection, humongous forest fires, surging home prices and surging rents, Biblical floods, inflation running amok and a recession on the horizon, social media disinformation, did I mention Global Warming and Existential Threat?  What, me worry?

You’d be forgiven if you thought maybe we’d lost our way.  The problems that plague us seem beyond the ability of our politicians to find common ground much less solutions. W.B Yeats maybe had it right:

 Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.  The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity. 

Half of us, maybe more, no longer believe much of anything outside the kooky crap they dial into on their internet sites.  Nothing is too deranged to be considered beyond the pale, as if the world of National Enquirer, aliens among us, babies with the face of Elvis, mutants on Mars, Jews shooting laser beams at the sequoias, the love child of 79 year old Joe Biden, all that tabloid idiocy was now more believable than the evening news.  Walter Cronkite would be laughed off the air now.  Moon landing?  Give me a break, all just staged, just like those purported mass killings.  Actors, false flags, misdirection, up is down, black is white.  Cannibal Democrats beneath the pizza parlor, Jesus circling the globe in a spacecraft, makes perfect sense to a large part of the population.

You think you’re living in the End Times, maybe you are, the End of Rational Thought.  You think you’re trapped in a funhouse with warped mirrors, brother, you are.  You think folks might come to their senses, I got a bridge to the South End I’ll sell you, easy terms, low interest, act now and I’ll sell you two, just add shipping and handling.  And as an introductory bonus I’ll throw in an autographed photo of Jesus in his spacesuit.  Operators are standing by.

The National Rifle Association, just after the latest mass killing of school children, suggested, without embarrassment, that what was needed wasn’t less guns but actually more guns.  If only the teachers had been armed, this tragedy might have been averted.  I know we live in a logic free world now so this kind of thinking shouldn’t really come as a surprise to all of us.

I would like to propose to the NRA and to the GOP that we just couldn’t agree more.  Actually, I would like to propose that we do agree more.  In fact, we have a modest proposal to make, which is this:  give a gun to every citizen regardless of age, religion or sex.  More guns equal less violence, right?  Well then, let’s put our money where our ammo is, a gun for everyone.  You can pick it.  Deer rifle, .22, 44 magnum handgun, AK-47 assault rifle, a bazooka even.  Okay, maybe not a bazooka.  But anything that can shoot a bullet, a dum-dum, a shotgun slug, you name it, it’s on its way complements of the government.

If an armed teacher could have saved those kids, think what a fully armed classroom of children with guns could have done.  Chopped the shooter up like a vegetable grater, that’s what!!  So call your congressman, call your NRA lobbyist, call the lady with the alligator purse, let’s get this done.  Making America Great Again won’t get accomplished with wishy-washy measures.  Arm America!  But … watch out for the crossfire!

Longevity and Bondo

Down at the Kustom Kar Body Shop the latest news of declining life expectancy for us Americans was met with some degree of skepticism at closing time. Fairlane Fred had looked up from reading the article in the newspaper he’d brought to the shop and the assembled hangers-on were smirking and laughing even before he’d finished the last paragraph.

“Gee, Fred you think those statistics apply to us?” Jake asked, lighting up a Marlboro. His empty beer can served as make-do ashtray where it balanced nicely on his beer belly and barely jiggled as he popped his third Bud. Quitting time at the Kustom was early today, it being Friday and all. George, the owner, had sent his crew home already and the Flatheads had assembled for their usual Friday wrap up. A ’62 Malibu two door sat in the paint room, its butterscotch epoxy gleaming behind the makeshift plastic sheet doorway that separated the finish room from the body shop’s clutter and mayhem. Monday George would put the wax to it, seven coats at least. Today he was more interested in putting the finish on the week. He had the fridge loaded with two cases of beer.

“Says here we’re dying faster than we did four years ago. Only going to live to be 78. Hell, Jake, you’re 73 now. The Japs get six more years than us. Time’s running out, buddy.” Freddie tipped his can at Jake. “Here’s to an early grave.”

“You believe that crap they put in the paper, go ahead, Fred, but I plan to live a long happy life.” He took a drag on his cigarette, a good pull on the Bud and laughed. “Clean living will do it every time, boys. That and a clear conscience.”

“I don’t know, Jake,” Big Ralph said, one foot on the mangled rear bumper of a Camry the towing company dropped off that morning. “You don’t look like the poster boy for ObamaCare to me. More like the Before picture of erectile dysfunction. And didn’t your doc tell you to quit smoking that last stent?”
“Doctors!” Jake snorted, “what the hell do they know?”

This sent the shop floor into waves of amusement. Half the assembled Flatheads were on doctor’s orders to quit drinking, quit smoking, get some exercise and maybe even eat right. Only Little Billy was thin enough to avoid qualifying as obese and that was barely. Little Billy didn’t really eat much of anything. He was like one of those bromeliads that attach to trees and live only off air and beer. 78 wasn’t likely to be in Billy’s cards. He said, “I haven’t been to a doctor in 40 years. And now they want to force me to buy insurance.”

“Here we go again” Phil growled, “another bitch session about health care. Let’s skip the crying for once.” He crumpled his can and tossed it in the industrial sized waste container George filled at least twice weekly. “Who’s ready for another beer?” he cried, rubbing his hands and heading toward the fridge.

And so another weekend got off to a great start at the Kustom Kar. Mercifully, no one would be keeping statistics down there. Or as Jake likes to say, what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Words to live by on the South End.

Hank ‘the Tank’ Amundsen is standing up next to his barstool taking a swing for the outfield wall. “My gawd,’ he was gushing, “my gawd, it was something to see. That kid of mine is going to the majors, you guyz heard it first.” Pete, two stools down, sipped affably at his pint of IPA and said quietly, “I think you told us this last week, Tank.” Jerry nodded from a table full of empty pints he and the Flatheads had killed during the first hour of happy hour, ready for the second. “I believe Pete’s correct, Tank, but he forgot to mention the week before and last month and I think, check me on this Pete, I think you told us Jimmy was going Pro last year.”

“Aw, guys, I’m just a proud papa, is all. You can’t blame me, the kid is great. You can see it in his swing he’s got plenty of homers coming up. Practically got a contract signed. The scouts probably already got eyes trained on him.”

Little Jimmy, if he declared eligibility at this point, would never graduate Middle School. Tank has been sending him to camps, buying gear, tossing balls, all the stuff a Tiger Woods training dad would do since the kid was two and a half. If Jimmy had hoped for a normal childhood of bikes and X-box, it wasn’t going to happen. If Tank wasn’t hauling him and his bats, gloves and balls to tournaments and camps, he was out back of his shack where he’d set up a batting cage, firing curve balls to the poor kid, yelling at him when he whiffed, hollering in joy when he blasted one into the nettles past the swingset that Jimmy never got to use. His sister, pretty much ignored by Tank, got the swing pretty much to herself.

I don’t know what happens to all the Jimmys whose alpha dads drove them to be the best soccer player, baseball star, football hero or basketball idol, whose only dream was to go pro, make the majors, play ten years or less, then retire wealthy as Michael Jordan. I suspect they become sad, depressed, broken adults. Maybe they put their kids through the same nightmare gauntlet.

I had a buddy in high school who won state champ in swimming. When I saw him after we’d trudged off to different colleges, I asked him if he was still training for the Olympics. “I quit,” he said. When I asked why, he answered, “I spent half my life in a chlorine pool, before school, after school. All so I could compete in the Olympics, probably never make it, then wonder all my damn life why I didn’t do something else. I’m going to do something else.”

I suspect there are mostly losers out there. If we taught em to love the game, if we taught em to enjoy their teammates, if we taught em that sports were fun more than a path to riches, maybe we’d have a lot more winners. Jimmy, I suspect, isn’t going to be a winner. And his dad is going to take it a lot harder than Jimmy.