The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Easter, a time for resurrection. And so our very devout Pastor-in-Chief has declared that the economy will be risen by Easter. Pews will fill, church bells will peal, congregations will congregate, the plague will have passed by our doorways. A miracle, a miracle! Hallelujah, a Miracle! The man could walk on water! The man could feed multitudes with a single loaf of bread! The man can stop a pandemic in its tracks with a single utterance! Truly, is this not a Man among Men. Verily, is this not the Second Coming?

Some of my friends think maybe he hasn’t been sent by God to save Mankind. These naysayers think he might be delusional, narcissistic, possibly insane. Obviously they were not followers of The Apprentice on prime time TV all those years, week after week passing judgement from on high, a cross between Judge Judy and Dr. Oz with a smidgeon of the gang at American Idol. The man’s a billionaire, so what if he doesn’t need to prove it by showing my pals his tax statements? He’s rich, he’s a playboy, his name is on really big buildings, he can do what he wants with beautiful women. If God was going to send another Moses, trust me on this one, he’d send Donald J. Trump. After all, the man’s favorite book is the Bible. Both of them, new and old, with too many of his favorite passages in there to name just one.

When he says he has a hunch those anti-malaria drugs will cure coronavirus and stop this pandemic completely, so what if the so-called experts shake their pessimistic heads. His hunch, in case you weren’t paying attention, comes from the Source. John the Baptist might have gotten dreams from the Lord, Donald gets hunches. You want an affidavit? You need a notary public? The man is an emissary, I’m telling you, the man is a prophet. If you think science is going to save your ass, wake up! Donald Trump is going to save your ass. Pretty soon. He’s got that antidote coming and when that gets distributed to even you non-believers, you doubting Thomases, this Kung Flu is going to meet its master capital M and by Easter the economy will be roaring back.

My buddies can chuckle all they want, but mark my words, those steeples will be ringing with Donald’s praises by Easter, bodies pressed close once again, hands will be shaken, hugs will be given and I suspect the offerings from thankful parishioners will rise up too in passed plates. Easter, a time for resurrection. A time to give thanks. To God, of course, but let’s be honest here, mostly to Trump. Can we have an amen?

These are hard times in America. The President said we’re at war as he opted to use the Defense Production Act to force industries to start making ventilators and probably hepa-vacuums for Mar-a-Lago. When the going gets tough, the tough talk tough. Kung Flu. Chinavirus. The war will be waged by name calling, apparently.

Someone must have whispered in the President’s ear that the public thought his initial response to the pandemic was pan-anemic. No big deal, the big guy said, just a hoax perpetrated by the media and his enemies on the left. But someone mentioned the tide would turn against him when cadaver carts rolled through American streets collecting the dead so he changed his tune. Asked how he thought he and his administration handled the pandemic, he gave himself a 10. Great Job, Donny! he might as well have crowed, giving himself a pat on those huge padded shoulders. Daily he rolls out ‘the team’, all jostling for camera space despite the admonition to adhere to ‘social distancing’. If any of these folks develop symptoms for kung flu, well, so much for the fireside chats.

Every day we get the updates, rosy scenarios of tests available to everyone soon, tomorrow, pharmaceuticals that appear very promising, ventilators coming immediately … then invariably some expert contradicts the President. No, not tomorrow, sir, no, not very soon at all. Happy talk is great. Over at Fox News the happy talk is non stop. What epidemic? That phony cold?

Meanwhile the economy has ground to a near halt. Planes are grounded, buses run mostly empty, stores are shuttered, restaurants are boarded up, bars don’t open, streets are desolate, cities are ghost towns. Concerts are banned, public gatherings forbidden, borders closed, schools closed down, even funerals are taboo. The stock market keeps going down down down. Trillions will be spent on corporate bailouts, unemployment compensation, tax relief, medical remedies, checks to all of us. Nobody but a self-deluding moron thinks tomorrow will be a better day. Somebody needs to get tested … and not just for the chinavirus.

The news of the week down at the Yacht Club before they closed their doors due to the plague and social distancing was the sudden upturn in gun purchases across the coronaviral landscape we once called the South End. Apparently unarmed households, worried anarchy was being unleashed, were buying up pistols, shotguns, military assault rifles and anything else that might protect them from the urban hordes who survived the pandemic and now roamed the countryside in search of toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Zombie apocalypse was nothing compared to what was coming, or so said Fat Freddie as he swilled his third pint of protective anti-viral panacea. “Mark my words, boys, they’ll be coming here to take what’s yours and you’ll be defenseless.”
Big Walter was three quarters in the bag sitting with his back to the far wall, his usual place in the Pilot House Lounge, giving him full view of the door and whatever threat might bust through. “Let em come to my house and see how they like a burst of semi-automatic lead.” Big Walter was full bore National Rifle Association long before Charlton Heston made the phrase Cold Dead Hand a rallying cry. Walter lived down past the Tyee Store in a dilapidated single wide back in the blackberries and nettles. To get to his swampy acreage, an army of plague victims would need to navigate the most rutted road on the South End, rattling mufflers and setting off Walter’s hounds in a baying alert.

None of us knew what kind of arsenal the minuteman had in there and none of us wanted to find out. Two Toke certainly didn’t, but he didn’t mind needling our resident Survivalist either. “Folks probably heard you had a stockpile of Charmin down here,” he told Walter. “Rumor has it you got more toilet paper than Costco. Might just be,” he said, pointing his ale at Walter back in the corner, “you’re the reason these urban desperadoes will come down here. Puts us all at risk, Walt, endangers the entire South End.”

“Let em come, Tom, see what they get. I got enough firepower to fight off all these kung flu fighters, trust me on that.”

“Kinda my point, Walt. You got an Alamo down there, but the rest of us, well, we’re easy targets.”

And so it went, that last night in the Lounge before the doors closed due to the Pandemic and we all drove back to our quarantined shacks. Driving home in the dark, I thought to myself, it seems like the Past has come to pay a visit, all of us isolated in the backwash, keeping to ourselves, hermits once again. I don’t expect anarchy to descend on the South End. What I expect is the same quiet we once had back when I first rolled down this blacktop road on a rain-swept windy night back in 1977. Paradise. Just a few of us escaped from the lives we’d given up on, the only dreams the ones we’d start working on right then. If we had to start over, not a bad place to begin. Maybe instead of guns, we should buy hoes and shovels, axes and rakes. It gladdened my heart to see the lights from our house pouring out onto the lawn. I thought, we’ll be okay. Hell, we’ll be fine.

The South End Diner, usually a cauldron of corny jokes and bad but upbeat behavior, fell eerily quiet the other morning in the wake of the growing coronavirus tsunami. Big Walter stirred his cream into his coffee for what seemed like half an hour without saying more than four words, which were ‘I Can’t Believe It’. The back table where the Flatheads held court was devoid of the usual vintage car talk, as if the mere mention of carburetors, hemis, dual mufflers or V-8 engines had been banned by edict from the Governor along with school attendance in the area and any event with more than a few hundred potential Typhoid Marys.

The Diner patrons, mostly those at high risk for the viral onslaught sweeping the world like a new Spanish flu, still gathered in their morning groups although a few were muttering that it would probably be best if they avoided the café in the near future, ‘at least til this thing settles down’. When Ralph sipped his coffee, sucked a little down the wrong chute and fell into a coughing fit, the entire place held its collective breath thinking they’d all been exposed to Covid-19. To a slow and miserable death itself. Little Jimmy left half his breakfast, lunged for the counter where he paid his bill and fled. A few others quietly laid aside their forks and coffee cups and followed Jimmy out the door to their antique vehicles and a nervous ride home.

This is the Year of the Plague apparently. The watchword is ‘social distancing’. Meaning, to the boyz of the Diner, imprisonment with the mizzus. Most of the sports they usually hungered for were delayed or canceled. Football, baseball, hockey, basketball, ping pong — all a thing of the past, victims of coronavirus. The boyz were still in shock. What would they do evenings? Weekends? Trapped in their cage with nothing worth watching on their cable television? All that money spent on ESPN and now nothing to see. Was life worth living, really, without March Madness to occupy their time? Judging by the cavernous looks on their faces, the answer was a resounding NO!

Two Toke, trying to lighten the mood, declared that this might be a good opportunity at self-improvement, maybe read a book or two. Fairlane Fred growled, ‘That isn’t funny, Tom.’ And someone back near the restroom replied, ‘The libraries are closed, haven’t you heard?’ Two Toke decided to shut up. The mood was far too ugly. Driving home in my soon-to-be-vintage pickup, I knew I wouldn’t be going to the Diner tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the days after that. We would all hole up in our caves, no ballgames, no sports page in the newspaper, nothing to buffer us from politics and plague. The South End was going dark. For how long, nobody knows.

These are strange and disconcerting times, as you may have noticed. And I’m not just talking about Ireland closing its bars before St. Patrick’s Day, something akin to the Catholic Church canceling Easter, both sacred events, holy of holy. The South End String Band had two, count em, two St. Pat’s Day gigs canceled which should qualify us for serious recompense when the Congress finally draws up its fiscal fix for the mayhem caused by the pandemic.

Fiscal fiddling is one thing, this being a full blown Recession in no time flat. The stock market boyz figured out the Administration is totally adrift, bouncing from advice to stay calm and continue going to work to an admission that this may be an epidemic that will be with us til the end of summer which sent the Market to an all-time drop on the Dow and the S&P. But what is more concerning to most of us as this quarantine drags on, confining Americans to their homes and their computers, is mental health. I’m talking, of course, about a pandemic of insanity. Men without sports, women with their husbands under foot, children barred from school and the usual escape from parental control.

In Spain, in Italy, the balconies of sequestered inmates sprout musicians playing for the neighbors, songs sung from high rise to high rise in a plaintive attempt to cheer one another up. Not gonna happen in the suburbs of Seattle or Baltimore. The other day the newspaper printed an article with a photo of a mom playing cello on the sidewalk with her son on drums. If that cheers you up, check with your health care provider. Next thing you know we’ll have the String Band out in the cul-de-sacs of the South End pounding out banjo tunes in the rain. You know, to cheer up the voluntarily incarcerated.

We’re in the initial phase of what is politely and inaccurately called Social Distancing. Hellfire, most of us have socially distanced since the invention of Facebook and the advent of the cellphone, nothing new there. But now that 90% of us are ordered to stay in our homes, the internet has overloaded and servers are crashing. It shouldn’t take much imagination to envision what mayhem will be unleashed when Netflix won’t stream, when Amazon shopping is curtailed, when apps are useless and when we’re left to, well, that imagination that’s been atrophied for years.

What is called for, what should be a national emergency, is an army of mental health professionals. Bad enough, this coronavirus, but millions of psychotic babbling neighbors trapped in a narrowing world with the attention span of mating rabbits? If your cellphone still works, call your representative, call your senator, call the governor … before it’s too late. Whatever you do, though, don’t call the White House. The stock market has taken enough hits lately, we don’t need a full blown Depression.

As the Pandemic worms its way into our consciousness, it might be time to reflect on what we’ve learned thus far. If you watched the President in his last couple of fireside chats, assuring us that we have nothing to fear except maybe the fear of Fauci’s Facts, you learned that the virus was foreign, not American. Which, no doubt, is why he closed the border to European travelers. This coronavirus wasn’t really much worse than a cold or the annual flu (which kills plenty more Americans than Covid-19) and so he recommended we suck it up and go into work where we could keep the engines of the mightiest economic engine in the history of the world grinding away.

The President brought in a few of the corporate giants to help him make the point that shaking hands was okay, no need for tests even if we had tests and we would certainly have tests very very soon, except Doc Fauci said we wouldn’t, and the tests we wouldn’t have would generously be conducted in drive-thru Walmart parking lots or other corporate giants’ parking lots, thank you from the American people, thank you very much. Google itself would be setting up a website for all of us, be up and running tomorrow with all relevant information on this pandemic thingy, great people, the Google people, very grateful us, the nation, thank you for the algorithms. Google did put out a statement that unfortunately, no, it would take some time to get that up and running. More than a day, Mr. Prez, actually more than a week, maybe longer. Probably should have offered information and advice at the press conference. But we all have confidence in American corporate leadership, thank you, thank you very much.

Would he himself be tested, he was asked. No, he was in good shape, tip top shape, nothing wrong with him. Couldn’t he unknowingly be a carrier, after all, he’d been exposed to someone who tested positive. Sure, he said, he’d get tested. His doctor later stated that no, he wouldn’t be tested, didn’t need to be. A few hours later the Prez announced he’d been tested. Negative. See, he knew it all along. Wasted test. Someone who needed it could have gotten it instead.

Meanwhile schools here have been closed for at least 6 weeks, hospitals are doing triage in the parking lots, restaurants are closing and many are going broke, offices are sending their employees home, concerts and sports tournaments are canceled, the news is nothing but Coronavirus Pandemic. Photos show empty bars, bare shelves at the grocery stores, a buying frenzy for frozen pizzas and toilet paper. State after state has instituted closures and advice, each on its own, sometimes just cities. We didn’t want the federal government in our lives, we got what we wished for. Thank you very much, Mr. President, your work is greatly appreciated. Keep shaking hands at Mar-a-Lago, sir. It instills confidence in the rest of us.

One more press conference from the White House should calm any nerves still frazzled. Hopefully the president’s advisors will discourage further assurances. Nobody needs to hear Jared Kushner is handling this crisis along with all the others he has on his plate.

Well, the liberals attempt to embarrass the President with all this talk of pandemic apparently is working nicely. The Doc-in-Chief came on network TV in a rare non-tweet appearance to calm the jittery nerves of a nation only beginning to sense the gravity of the tsunami of disease coming to our shores. He bragged about the strength of our economy, better than it’s ever been of course, as if the stock market would rebound in the morning and our money would show this virus who was really boss. He blamed the Europeans for not handling this plague and banned them from coming to our blessed country. He told us he had the very best medical staff working on the problem. He was going to delay the day we would ordinarily pay income taxes and give tax breaks to small businesses affected adversely by coronavirus.

This morning he tweeted corrections to most of the above. Ireland is okay to come on over. U.S. citizens could still fly. Co-pay for the epidemic treatments really meant just the tests for the disease. You know, when we get test kits. Needless to say the stock market plunged to new lows. Nothing like bogus reassurance to give investors major jitters. The plague is coming and no one is doing much of anything about it except blame foreigners and mumble how great America is. Again.

The Great Panic of 2020 is starting. Schools are closing for months at a time, sports are being played with nobody allowed in the stands, tournaments are canceled, concerts are canceled, the South End String Band was canceled twice! As a small but unprofitable bizness, the Band should see fiscal relief from this administration but I’m betting it won’t be soon, probably the true definition of ‘social distancing.’ What we saw last night was proof that nobody is driving the bus. And the bus is definitely off the highway now, headed who knows where. Trump is worried about the Dow Jones and his chances for re-election if the economy tanks. The rest of us are worried that it’s a long way off before November, plenty of time to do maximum damage. And I doubt we’ll be blaming the Europeans. Like the Man said a few short days ago, stay calm and continue going to work. Coronavirus is basically a bad cold. Nothing to fear but fear of the facts themselves….

I got a buddy who’s been predicting a worldwide economic Armageddon for about a decade now. He prays for it since he’s pulled out of the stock market after the 2008 debacle. What he thinks, what he hopes for, is that a good dose of economic hardship will drag Trump out of office, a result he dearly desires. He’s sitting pretty, pension, big Social Security checks, wife who worked too, plenty of money in the bank. If the little people have to suffer inordinately along with the rich boyz, okay by him. Small price to pay for ridding the country and the world of Donald J. Trump.

This morning the stock market went into such a head-spinning free fall that they closed trading down for a bit, see if that would cool some fevered brains selling like the world was coming to an end. Or coronavirus was about to go Pandemic. Oil prices dropped by a third on news of the virus and also because the Saudis and Putin decided to play chicken with the reserves, see who could outlast the other. As I write this, the Dow Jones is down about 2000 points and still sinking. Oil is closing in on 30 bucks a barrel. Another day of this and gas stations will give free fill-ups if you purchase a drinking glass.

I’m no economist, as you may have surmised over the years, but I know this. No one wants to see another Great Depression, except maybe my buddy. He asked me once what I was doing to protect myself in case his prophesy proved true. He was squirreling silver into deposit boxes, investing in gold, probably burying money out in the backyard. How about you, Skeeter? What’s your fallback?

My fallback? I don’t really think like that. I’m the grasshopper who fiddled away his summers while the ants labored. C’est la vie, I guess is my answer. But, I told my buddy I’d just buy a gun and come and take what he had. You know, if the neighbors hadn’t already cleaned him out by then. Don’t wish for a Depression, we’re all in this jungle together.

It is encouraging to know that this coronavirus thingy is being ably handled by our President whose motto must be The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Facts Themselves. The spin doctor is In. I suspect when he claims to be fantastically knowledgeable about all things medical, evidently because his gene pool has an MIT expert somewhere in the family tree, we can all relax, we’re in capable hands. In fact, if we’re symptomatic of Covid-19, go ahead and go to work. Do us good and probably generate optimism among our co-workers.

Apparently the folks out here on the Left Coast, ground zero for this mutating virus, aren’t reassured one bit. Josephine Nursing Home in Stanwoodopolis just went into quarantine mode. The Community Center just canceled the South End String Band’s scheduled St. Patrick’s Day dance and concert. Along with most every other public event this coming month. I tried to explain the band was infectious, not contagious, but panic had already spread from the nursing homes to the senior centers, schools to fire stations. Naturally we agreed it was probably in the public health interest, then immediately booked a gig at the Stanwoodopolis Hotel for St. Pat’s Saturday March 14th, figuring, I guess, green beer would inoculate any and all from the scourges of this fast spreading epidemic.

Me, I’m recovering from my yearly bout of Camano Crud, the symptoms of which seem astoundingly similar to Covid-19, but of course there are no tests available right now which is reassuring to the Doctor-in-Chief who wants those numbers to stay low. Even now a cruise ship is drifting like a plague ship off San Francisco, but offshore, those contaminated aren’t going to be counted in the national numbers. If I don’t miss my guess, the stricken in Washington will soon be quarantined in dinghys and rowboats off the western coast to reduce the headcount of victims. Let’s not even imagine what will become of the fatalities, but tomorrow’s death count should be substantially less. Today’s count? A hoax to embarrass the President.

They say St. Patrick chased the snakes from Ireland. Kind of like St. Skeeter’s Day, memorializing ridding the South End of crocodiles. We may, before long, have to celebrate St. Donald’s Day, to commemorate chasing the plague from our shores. Stay calm, go to work, come down to the Hotel Saturday night, nothing to fear here.

I guess you know you’ve reached the Left Coast when your motel room offers a Gideon Bible and the Teachings of Buddha. Us weary travelers, still on the road, might just be in desperate need of Guidance after a dozen wrong turns on the Google Map. Who knows how many converts have left these over-priced motels and returned Saved ….

Personally I’m in near Satori just to reach the rock strewn shores of the Pacific in one piece. One of our old friends back on the highway in Sedona, Arizona suggested I read the works of Tibetan monks so I scrolled the Teachings a bit. But as I told a carload of proselytizers who had driven up on Guitar Bob and me, chainsaws in our hands atop a slick log pile ten feet high that suddenly let go under us, you have to seek converts among the lost and forlorn, not those who miraculously just survived near death and came up grinning.

The Universe is an incomprehensible place, I reckoned when I was about 16. A friend of mine — let’s call him the Zig Zag Man — once told me ‘for those who require no explanations, there are no mysteries.’ Sage words, I thought then and still do. I stopped looking for God a long time ago. She wants to get hold of me, call me up, I’m in the phone book.

Otherwise life itself is plenty. I can’t spend my time trying to figure out what essentially is indecipherable. Better, I think, to live it, not try to explain it.

The roadmap to the Universe isn’t something you can publish. Maybe those who seek a Guru find some solace there, fine by me, but Universal Truth? I don’t think so. Better to read poetry, make music, enjoy friends, help others, be kind. The world may actually be what you believe. But only for you.

We’re headed to Big Sur today, a long and winding road. If we discover Nirvana on the way, I’ll get back to you … but don’t hold your breath.