The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

My neighbor Roy was down at the new watering hole the other day trying to decide between the 3 dozen microbeers they have going stale on tap. So many choices, so little time …. Finally, after inquiring about a couple of their options with the bartendress who really didn’t know much of anything about any of them other than reading the name off the tap, Roy asked her what she preferred. Roy is single and probably thought it would give him a leg up on a possible dating opportunity if he ordered same as her.

So what if she’s 20 years younger, drinking the same beer is one rung up the ladder of shared ‘likes’. Now, if she liked to fall asleep on the couch watching ESPN after a hearty dinner of peanuts, Doritos and vodka tonics, Roy was in like Flint, a match made, if not in Heaven, somewhere this side of internet dating.

“Bud Lite,” she told him, beer of choice. “Bud Lite?” he repeated, sorely disappointed. It was as if he’d gone to a white linen restaurant, asked his waitress what was good this evening, and been told Big Macs. With fries. Roy told me he actually considered ordering a Bud Lite so as not to hurt her feelings. Roy — as you can see — is a Sensitive Man. Although his first wife, and second one too, might disagree. He met them both in bars late at night in Stanwoodopolis. Poor lighting, I guess, or lack of competition. A relationship probably lasts longer built on more than a shared thirst, but then, I’m not a marriage counselor.

Roy finally decided he’d just go somewhere else to find a beer. Maybe he noticed her wedding ring or maybe it was just too many unknowns on all those taps. Down at the South End we like to keep it simple, but not too simple.

Jerry Hatrick had converted the back booth of the Marina’s Pilot House Lounge into a personal office, judging by the papers strewn around his empty pint glasses. “Whazzup?” Flathead Fred asked amiably as three of us yahoos slid in with our own beers at risk of foaming onto Jerry’s table top filing cabinet. “You doing your taxes early this year??”

Jerry pushed a pile of papers into a heap, leaned back with a groan and said, “Just trying to decide whether to take Social Security now … or wait.” The boyz are all over this one since we’re of that age. Fred took his at 64 even though the benefits were way less than if he’d waited til 70. “I’m grabbing what I can before they go broke,” he told Jerry. Phil laughed. “Fred, if the government goes broke, you got worse troubles than no monthly check.”

“Laugh all you want, Phil, I’m hedging my bets. There’s less people putting in and more of us taking out. You do the math.” Jerry said that’s exactly what he was trying to do before we interrupted. And that was assuming he lived until, oh, 90 and then how much would the difference be if he took early retirement and what would it be if he took it at 66? The last thing he needed was Fred’s monkeywrench logic, which included inflation, health insurance, nursing home care and anything else he could throw in to muddy Jerry’s mathematics. “Whadda you think, Skeeter?” Phil asked about ¾’s of a pint into the discussion.

I’m 70 and even though I was eligible for an early pay-out myself, I hoped to hold out til the bitter end. Recently I got my earnings statement for the past 47 years. Four years I made zip. Nada. Zilch. Nine I didn’t break into 4 figures. The boyz always considered me semi-retired and so do I … since about 1975. Truth is, I tell em, I’ll be working as long as I can. Which, of course, cracks the table up.

“Next you’ll be wanting us to buy your beers out of sympathy,” Fred crows, shaking his head. Fred worked for 45 well paid years as a construction foreman. His reduced benefits would look pretty good to this grasshopper who fiddled away his working years. Jerry’s going to have a hard time too, I know. But his working days are over with his arthritis problems and pretty soon he’s going to have to roll the dice like the rest of us. If I know Jerry, he’ll have a few more pints, divide by an even number, weigh the empty glass and then flip a coin. Just like the rest of us high rolling gamblers….

Well, now that the euphoria of the Trump Firing is beginning to wear off, no doubt most of you are slowly learning that the post-Donald era is about to begin. No more late night tweets, no more foaming at the mouth by our leader, no more firing of aides who thought he was a moron and said so publicly, no more tell-all books by his lawyers and friends and relatives and previous cabinet heads, no more Trump Comedy Show. Oh sure, there will be the indictments and trials, the tax returns finally becoming public, possibly even incarceration, but all those will take place in Covid Time, meaning, staggered out in endless weeks and months, not the rapid fire minutes we’ve come to expect the last four years.

And those wild and crazy cast of characters that zipped through the White House, here one week, gone the next, a constant merry-go-round of hirings and firings, all the Bannons and Stephen Millers, the Giulianis and those kids of Trump, a kaleidoscope of insanity, a circus really of clowns piling into the VW bug, a thousand clowns one after the other so that you could barely keep track of who was Sec. of State this week or who was running the EPA, half of them never confirmed anyway, but lordy, there were a lot of them and they never failed to light up the twitterverse. You think you’re not going to miss them? Oh, you’ll miss them. What will you spend your time on if not the constant news cycle once Biden Boring becomes the norm. No drama Joe. Smooth running government machinery. Sure it sounds good now, but wait a month or so, you’ll be watching cute kitty You-Tube videos again, nostalgic for the Orange Man. You’ll be online shopping, a consumer junkie, addicted to Ebay and Google but better than the void left with no Donald.

If you’re lucky, the P.T. Barnum of politics will reinvent himself, find the backers for a new network and return triumphant on your cable TV subscription, maybe a small additional monthly premium but nothing half the country wouldn’t gladly pony up, forget the mortgage payment an occasional month. America needs Trump the way a junkie needs smack, no price would be too high. Sure, you think you can kick the habit. You think your mental health would improve. They all think that way. Until someone sets the needle on the table next to them. The Trump Network: Not just prime time, Trump all the time.

It took awhile, but it was an entertaining wait. If you’re waiting for that high minded, let’s get behind the newly elected president, concession speech, you’ve got an even longer wait. Inside the Ovoid Office, furniture is being smashed, aides are being trashed, and believe it, tongues are being lashed too. There is no going gentle into any good night for this spoiled brat. The chessboard has been overturned, the lawsuits filed, the sychophants lined up to agree that the election was rigged, ballots were faked, the dead voted and those mail-in ballots were illegal.

What did you expect? Well wishes for the country? A call for unity? High minded speeches? C’mon, the guy is a thug, a crime boss. He’s thinking about revenge, he’s looking for a club, he’s talking tough with Rudy, he’s crying foul on the phone to Fox News. He’s using a ball bat to smash Obama’s painting down the hall. The Trump Tantrum Show, ladies and gentlemen, is just on the pilot program. We have two more months to witness the greatest meltdown in U.S. history, greater than the Nixon drunken prayer meetings with Henry call me Hank Kissinger. This should be epic. Heads will fall, windows will be broken, bad craziness will be the order of the day. You think he’s leaving that White House without being dragged out of there, you weren’t paying attention the last four years. This petulant little man is stewing in his own ego.

How do exact revenge on the millions of people who voted against him? Oh, bet your stimulus check on it, he’s working on it. Grinding teeth, spitting obscenities, scaring the staff. Who’s got the nuclear football, they’re probably wondering. Who’s going to put the strait jacket on this foaming mouthed monster? Kellyanne? Mikey Pence? They’re hiding in the coat closet, hoping to survive two more months without insult or injury. Good luck, gang.

They know what he’s thinking. Once he’s deposed, the IRS and the federal courts are coming with subpoenas. The fines and penalties may scare him more than possible incarceration. The Wizard of Odd may very well be broke. He certainly won’t have fine clothes on behind the suddenly pulled back curtain. Just a naked jaybird. And very possibly a naked jailbird. No, don’t expect him to leave without a hook and a chain.

Oh yeah, the suspense is killing me, waiting for one of the last four states in play to declare Sleepy J the winner. Half my friends want it decided, verdict in, guilty as charged, but me, I’m in no hurry. The man is pacing his Ovoid Office like an amphetamine monkey, raging, tweeting, chewing on his 500 dollar tie. His minions are out in the hinterlands like the Wicked Witch’s flying apes, filing lawsuits, asking for recounts, asking for the counts to stop, demanding the counts continue. This is a full on mental meltdown of a 5 year old brat.

I’m surprised anyone is surprised Trump isn’t going into that good night gently. He pretty much telegraphed the game plan the last few months. But I bet like the first time four years ago, he was shocked to be this close and that must be a tough horse pill to swallow this time, so close … and yet so far. At first I hated the suspense of waiting for the finale, now I’m enjoying watching the noose tighten. Georgia! Who’d a thunk it? I bet Stacey Abrams is going to be offered a nice cabinet post for a reward. She deserves it.

Nice to see the Trump boyz becoming the spokesmen for their daddy. The nuts don’t fall far from the tree. The longer this goes on, the more I’m starting to enjoy the suspense, let him swing in the wind and feel the noose tighten every hour, every day, every ballot drop. Pig on a spit. Hear him sizzlin on that grill, y’all!

I say recount every state, lob a thousand duds into the court gears, cry me a river, let the pigs squeal to their dirty black hearts’ content, I’m going to savor my victory beers as long as it takes. Jan 20th, we get a D-9 in front of the White House and drag his sorry ass out of my life. He can have his new Trump Network, let Eric and Don Jr and Barbie have a half hour slot, but I don’t have to watch anymore. My national nightmare is over, fini, done. Ding dong, the witch is dead.

Four years ago we had an election party here at the hacienda, about 4 dozen or so friends gathered to watch Hillary Clinton be crowned queen of America. Things were going swell, toasts made, food eaten, drinks flowing … until about an hour into a news broadcast that predicted Florida voted Trump, then most of the Deep South and finally the Rust Belt. People left in droves and quite a few left in tears. Trust me, we swore we would never have another election party so help us god.

Fast forward what seems like a lifetime, those four years of Donald J. Trump, the man who has a pathological need to inject himself into our daily lives the way Covid did three years later. Every damn day was another round of Trump, every news feed was more Trump, every social media platform was Trump and Trump and in case you were looking for another helping, Trump. Those four years seem like an eternity in the rearview.

The pollsters, just like they did in 2016, predicted a landslide, a blue tsunami, a massacre. And just like 2016, they were absolutely wrong. By midnight the election was a virtual dead heat and we were dead on our feet, muttering incoherently as we shuffled off to our sleepless bed depressed and angry and considering emigration to some far off land. The Senate was back in the hands of Moscow Mitch and Trump was calling for the voting to stop, he’d already won.

Yesterday, the day after, he was declaring victory but demanding vote counting stop in Pennsylvania and demanding vote counting continue in Nevada and Arizona. Logical coherency is not one of the President’s many virtues and whether this is what half the country loves about the man, all I can honestly say is after four years of him I have no idea what people love about this narcissistic huckster. Business acumen? Christian ideals? Well considered policies? Family values? Honesty? Nice hair?

Today the country and the world are waiting on the last states left to finish their tally. Any one that falls into Sleepy Joe’s box means the end of Donald J. Trump’s presidency. My long national nightmare will be over, to quote Gerald Ford regarding Watergate and the Nixon near impeachment. No doubt in my mind whatsoever we won’t see the man slink quietly into the shadows. Fox will set him up with a news show or he’ll start his own network, let him rant to his heart’s content. Trust me, we haven’t seen the last of this snake oil salesman.

But … he will no longer be the bull in the White House china shop. What the next four years bring, your guess is good as mine. Still, half of us are ready for some sanity.

Every year the editorial staff of the Crab Cracker comes to me and asks why don’t we run a South End Man and Woman of the Year? Mary Jo Permkowski begs them to run that contest so she can win South End Businesswoman of the Year for her Pedicure Salon, Mo-Toe Mojo. She figures she’s practically the only business left on the South End, a virtual shoe-in, she thinks, assuming South End Greenworks, Two Toke Tom’s semi-legal cannabis dispensary isn’t considered a legitimate candidate. Mary Jo’s kidding herself — Two Toke probably would win Man AND Business of the Year both.

I tell them let Stanwoodopolis run their little contest. High School’s over down here. We don’t elect Prom King and Queen — none of us were the captain of the football team or the most sexually active cheerleader. We know how the Game is rigged. And not just Yokel of the Year —- I mean the Big Game. Why do you think we live down here? To win popularity contests? Or to escape em …?

Oh, I suppose we could run our own easy enough. Best Moonshiner. Best Gyppo. Best Nettle Farmer. Best Hydroponic Cannabis Cultivator. Best Trailer Court. Best Old Hippie. Best Dandelion Show Garden. Best Poacher. Best Meth Lab. Best Rehabbed Felon. Best E-Bay saleswoman. Best Illegal Crabber. Best Friend of Colton Harris Moore. Best Glass Artist Who Plays Banjo and Writes Articles for the Crab Cracker.

But NO! we’re not gonna stoop to that. If all we wanted were a pack of sycophantic friends to vote us their favorite yokel or their best underground business, we’d sign up for Facebook and get all our neighbors to “Like” us. Probably mostly end up with hits from the FBI or the IRS anyway. No sir, let the popularity voting go on without us another year. We may not be the cutest or the most athletic or the smartest or the friendliest, we may not have a South End Fan Club or 2 zillion connections on Linked-In, we may not get invited to those catered North End soirees for the rich and famous winners of last year’s People of the Year, but we’ll just struggle on. And Betty Jo — you didn’t have an atheist’s prayer against Two Toke anyway, I don’t care how promiscuous you are.

Big Walter had a black plague mask with white words printed on it that said This Mask Is As Worthless As My Government. He had it pulled down so it only covered his mouth and not his nose, his idea of a personal protest. He and the Trump Boosters were sitting in the corner of the South End Marina’s Pilot Lounge, lately Revolution Central for the hotheads who come to congregate after a hard day of driving their 4×4’s up and down the island with their political signs and their semi-automatics in full view, no doubt a reminder to the rest of us commies that the day was coming when they would exercise their 2nd amendment rights if we won the election.

Little Jimmy was wondering loudly if maybe they should go down Tuesday and guard the polling station against ‘outside agitators’. Fairlane Fred was on his 3rd White Russian, an irony that apparently escaped his attention when he opined that the ‘Russkies’ were definitely trying to put their ‘finger on the scale’ for Biden and it might be time for an ‘intervention’ down at the polls. He’d heard on social media they would be there in force to coerce the voters.

“Hell yes they’ll try to intimidate the sheep!” Big Walter shouted as he tore off his mask, casting a wary eye toward Leonard, the new weekend bartender who only shook his head slightly and turned to a customer down the bar. That customer would be me. Two Toke sat an extra stool away, social distance in this Year of the Plague. “We’ll take some personnel down there and make sure things are on the up and up,” Walt declared.

“I’m in, Walt, count me in!” Little Jimmy declared resolutely. Fred and Jerry volunteered too. Two Toke chuckled. “Looks like we got ourselves an army in search of a war.”

Walter scowled and said if Two Toke Tom wanted a war, he’d gladly give him one. “My point exactly, Walter,” TT said and laughed.

Little Jimmy wanted to know what time they should show up and Fred said when the damn polling station opens up and Jerry asked where was the damn polling station anyway. This cracked Two Toke up. “Leonard,” he said, “give these vigilantes directions to the war, they’re short a GPS.” Leonard, despite being new to the job, stayed diplomatically out of this, just kept drying beer pints with a towel and putting them on the rack below the bar.

“That’s right, go ahead and laugh, Bernie Boy,” Walter growled, his mask on the table, definitely worthless now. “But when America turns socialist, you won’t be smiling anymore and that, my leftist friend, is a fact.”

“Walt, you wouldn’t know a fact if it ran you over with your own truck. But hey, I’m totally okay with you boys patrolling the polling station. Really, I am,” Tom said amiably. “ More power to you, more power to the people. I’d even go with you. You know, if I had a gun, but being a peacenik and all, I don’t. “

“Sure you would, Tom, sure you would,” Big Walter said, shaking his head sadly.

“I would, Walt, sure as you believe in facts, I would. Tell me what time to show up, maybe I’ll join the militia.”

“Leonard,” I said, “give these patriots a round on me. And Thomas here too. I think we’ve found some unity at last in these divided times.” And so, a few days before the election, we all drank a good will toast to an honest vote, long live the queen. Two Toke and I left together and neither of us told the boys our state was strictly mail-in ballots, no more polling stations to guard.

The other day I was clearing brush down by the road when I heard horns honking and engines revving, a cacophony audible from half a mile away. I put down my sickle and waited to see what parade was going to pass by me on its way to the head of the island. Half a minute later a convoy of trucks proceeded past me at half the speed limit, TRUMP 2020 signs propped up in the pickup beds, American flags half tattered from the wind shear snapping in the wind, horns blaring, lights on emergency blinkers. At the head of the line was Big Walter dressed in military camo, MAGA hat worn proudly, arm out the rolled down window, an assault rifle in the gunrack behind him. When he saw me standing by the side of the road, he gave me a big thumbs up and yelled, ‘Resistance is futile, Skeeter!!’

Rather than yell something obscene back over the road roar, I just stood at attention and gave him a salute. Okay, one finger only. Big Walter thinks he’s the Commandant of the South End Militia these days, the patriot who’ll guard the county’s ballot drop box against possible tampering, the guerilla warrior who’ll take on the Antifa when they turn up after Trump’s victory to protest what they’ll claim is a bogus election, the gunslinging take-no-prisoners vigilante who’ll guarantee liberty for the white males of the country who he claims are under siege and discriminated against.

Behind his lead vehicle came a ragtag assortment of Walter’s militia. Fat Phil and Little Jimmy rode together in a Ford 250 jacked higher than the gigantic tires looking like an escapee from a monster truck show. Behind them came a couple of half tons, one dump truck, a WW Two jeep, two flatbeds, three or four vintage cars and trucks and oddly, taking up the rear, Two Toke with his battered Volkswagen van circa 1966, peace signs plastered all over it and a Grateful Dead insignia hand painted on the front . Behind him were the half dozen poor folks who were stuck in the traffic jam, probably embarrassed to be part of the parade. Or maybe not.

Two Toke grinned happily, shot me the peace sign and I just shook my head as he rolled past in that micro bus like an acid flashback to the Viet Nam protests of our political youth. Here we are again, I thought, back where we started, nothing much changed. I picked up my sickle and went back to slashing sticker bushes and blackberries. By spring they’d be grown back and I’d be at it again.

One week to go until the referendum on our current Leader. Post-covid, he’s on the campaign trail asking his troops to come out and guard the polling stations, cautioning that the mail-in ballots will be fraudulent, declaring that no votes should be counted after midnight on the day of the election despite many states having laws that declare ballots will be counted later if they meet the postmark. The winds of change are in the air, fragrant as a smoldering leaf mulch fire.

I talked to my neighbor whose mother died last night in Wausau, Wisconsin. The covid spike there in that fair city is 50% of those tested are covid positive. The outbreak started, oddly enough, when the President came there and his troops, all drunk on the Kool-aid belief of the virus as a left wing media hoax, stood shoulder to shoulder in Trumpstep solidarity. The GOP legislators who are running close elections are turning up these days with masks on, stepping a political distance away from the SuperSpreader himself, a sure sign that his coat tails aren’t going to help but instead pull them down too.

Polls are predicting a possible massacre. To which the Republicans counter that the polls were wrong last time. They weren’t wrong the last mid-term and they won’t be wrong this next time either. Key states lined up for Mr. T by 77,000 votes and the electoral college fell his way. You want to bet they’ll fall that way this time, call my bookie, I’m happy to give you odds. 538, the Nate Silver polling algorithm, gives the odds at 88% that Biden will beat this guy like a recalcitrant mule. 538 puts the bet on the Senate at 74% the Democrats will take over.

I’m ordinarily not one who thinks the government should be completely in the hands of one party. But after the last four years of incompetence, lies, racism, xenophobia, narcissism, corruption and impeachable behavior glossed over by his sycophantic minions, well, I’m ready for some adults to run the show for awhile and hopefully not get too power crazed.

The writing’s on the White House wall. The country knows this Covid response was a stupid senseless mess and they will vote accordingly. Trump himself sees what’s coming. Check and mate. Time, he figures, to tip over the checkerboard. If he’s ahead at midnight Nov. 3rd, well sir, that’s a victory. The rest he’ll fight out in the Supreme Court. And you wondered why the Barrett woman was rammed through in record time ….