The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Now that we all understand that the news is faux and science is a hoax, the door to Understanding is wide open once again. Just this week you maybe read about the guy who’s built his own rocket and plans to launch himself into the sky blue yonder so he can look down and prove with undoctored photographs that the earth is flat. His rocket was financed by the Flat Earth Society and I admit, I didn’t realize there were still Flat Earthers among us, and even now I assume they are a comedy troupe out of L.A.

Ordinarily I would applaud the guy. He says he doesn’t believe in Science but he’s blasting off on his own expedition and a high risk experiment. Copernicus and Galileo sat on their butts, but this adventurer is putting his on top of highly explosive fuel tanks. Course, he’s only going up about 1000 feet and probably won’t get too great a photo documentation, but c’mon, give the man credit. If not for brains, for courage.

I know, you’re wondering why he doesn’t spend the money for a rocket on a plane ticket. Get up about 35,000 feet, 35 times higher than his homemade cannon shell, so maybe he doesn’t believe airplanes can fly or he doesn’t like going through Homeland Security, whatever, he’s going up.

Who knows, maybe he’ll discover the planet IS flat. Maybe this global warming has pancaked the earth to the point the oceans are cascading off the edges in giant waterfalls out into the galactic void virtually unnoticed by the space station pretending to orbit a flat planet. Personally — and this only me — I’d forego that ballistically dangerous ride into outer space and go the other way. Dig down, buddy, until you reach the other side, the earth’s bottom. Probably not even a thousand feet and way less dangerous. Course, you want to be careful that last shovel full so you don’t fall through. Especially if you don’t believe in science and gravity. God speed, Mr. Flatlander!

A buddy I met this summer gave me a book called ‘Clapton’s Guitar’ about a luthier in a small town in the Appalachians who was building Eric Clapton a custom guitar. The book was great, a chronicle of constructing a six string from scratch, an instrument worthy of a guitar legend that also waxed philosophic about country living, old time music, tonewood selections, luthiery skills and the life of a consummate and modest craftsman. I was knocked out. I was so knocked out I decided I would build a guitar too, inspired straight into insanity.

It’s as if I’d seen a Picasso and the week after decided I’d just go ahead and paint a masterpiece of modern art. Why not? Isn’t that what we want art to do, launch us off the ground we thought we were gravitationally bound to?

So okay, let’s understand right off the Get-Go that no, I knew I wasn’t going to get a commission from Clapton or Jimmy Page to make them a custom Skeeter axe, I just wanted to see if I could make one at all, something playable, something pretty, something that might even sound good, something that wouldn’t fall apart. At least not right away. Not that I need another guitar — after all I have 3 electrics, 4 acoustics and one steel guitar. Plus a couple of ukes, a mandolin and half a dozen banjos mostly homemade. But NOT a guitar I’d made myself.

The mizzus shook her head, once again, but as always knew I was going to go right ahead and make a fool of myself or drive myself crazy trying. I’m a couple weeks into this and managing both of the above nicely. Guitar luthiery, for any of you uninitiated, entails specialized tools and skills I do not have nor will I acquire in the course of a one-off instrument. And even though the book that kickstarted me on this quixotic journey pretty much described in detail each step of the process, I had no clear idea how HARD this would be. No doubt I could bore you with horrorshow details of my sad attempts at everything from bending sides to cutting kerfings, but I want to keep moving forward, not looking back, otherwise I would need grief counseling now and never get to the end. Whatever the End is.

So I’m reading about bracing strategies and radical soundhole placements on the side, not the top as usual. I know, it would make sense to keep it simple, stick with the Tried and True, follow instructions, yada-yada, but … I’m only building ONE, why not make it unique, why not shoot for Art, maybe go for the Picasso too as long as I’m lost in the fantasy? When I’m done — if I ever am — I may not know how to play the blues on that fancy new axe laying in pieces down at my shop, but I should be well versed in what the blues are. I’m living them every day now.

The ladies up at Jolene’s Beauty Boutique and Gift Shoppe were all atwitter over Trump’s latest pot stirrer, calling Elizabeth Warren once again Pocahontas. “What is with all the name calling?” Nancy Jacobs was asking from behind her People magazine while her curls were curing. “Can’t the man just learn a modicum of courtesy? He is, after all, the President.”

Ronald was snipping and sniping from behind Mrs. Wilkerson’s chair, merrily joining the fray as usual. Jolene had long ago given up on curbing Ronald’s acid tongue and besides, he was her best beautician. And a favorite among some of her best customers after all these years. “What else would we girls have to talk about if the Donald wasn’t tweeting his little nasties every morning? I know I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed, the boredom would be just too much. Too much!” he giggled happily.

“But to say that in front of all those Indians,” Barbara Massey, said, shaking her head violently and causing Shelley, the new beautician, to drop her scissors. “It’s shameful, is what it is. What must they have thought? He asks them to come to the White House for some kind of honor for the native soldiers and then he goes right after Mrs. Warren. It’s shameful.”

“Well,” Ronald sighed, “it IS called the WHITE House. The boy is just so happy to be the great white father, he forgets himself.”

“Shameful,” Barbara Massey said once again and Shelley quickly stopped cutting to let her have free rein. “He might as well bring the NAACP in for some honorific and call Obama Uncle Tom. It isn’t right.”

“Or maybe bring up the birther thing again,” Ronald said. “You never get enough of that. In fact he’s been saying it lately, I hear.”

“What kind of country are we living in,” Mrs. Wilkerson lamented. “I heard he was going on about the British First people, sending out phony stories about the Muslims, and now the British are upset. We have the Russians interfering and we aren’t doing one blessed thing about it and instead our President is making trouble in England.”

Ronald laughed. “The boy lives to offend. Half the country love that about him. Mean, nasty little bully, they wish they could do that too. They’d vote for him all over again.”

“I’d vote for Pocahontas,” Shelley said suddenly. The parlor went quiet. Shelley rarely offered any comments or editorials. “I would,” she said more firmly.

“Well, I’d vote to do the man’s hair,” Ronald said wistfully. “I’d give my left …” Ronald caught himself, “finger for a chance to do that tangerine hair. And think of the gossip in his salon, Jolene.”

Jolene looked up from the cash register by the front door. “Faux hair, Ronald.”

Shelley was the only one who didn’t laugh. “What he needs is a good scalping. Pocahontas wouldn’t save that white man, okay by me.”

And so it goes up at the salty salon, bastion of gossip, hotbed of frothy liberal discontent. The South End is many things, but fools are not much suffered, at least not the ones off-island.

Alabama, you got
the weight on your shoulders
That’s breaking your back.
Your Cadillac
has got a wheel in the ditch
And a wheel on the track

Alabama, as Neil Young lamented, is a damn mess. The President’s spokeswoman, Huckabee’s daughter, unabashedly aware the Chief has his own harassment issues to deal with, tells reporters after she’s demanded they tell her what they’re thankful for this Thanksgiving, no doubt thinking she’s running a 3rd grade class of stupid students, that the voters should decide whether Judge Roy Moore should be the next Senator of that proud state.

I guess the logic here is that if Donald Trump was elected President, the voters have substituted the ballot for the force of justice in the judicial system. You got a Groper-in –Chief, why not a pederast Senator? The voters say okay, I guess it’s okay. Or like Trump says, better Moore than some liberal.

This is the state of politics in America these days. Neil Young could’ve substituted America for Alabama. Our Cadillac has a wheel in the ditch.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Sarah Huckabee Sanders wants to know what we’re thankful for before she’ll take a question. I’m thankful for Neil Young, Sarah. My question is how can the President of the United States support a pederast over a Democrat who isn’t particularly liberal and how is it, as a woman, you’re not ashamed every damn day to speak up for this Harasser?

Maybe you haven’t seen the photos that prove the moon landings were a hoax. Probably a little too busy sorting through the NY Times trying to figure out what stories are faux news and what are just editorials. I have trouble myself. My father sent me an e-mail chain letter yesterday showing John McCain, the senator who ran for President, the same one Trump said was no war hero in his book, wasn’t a war hero after all but a traitor as well.

I’m not sure if NASA is now the Enemy or not. I’m not sure the moon even really exists or is just some mylar balloon painted with phony baloney craters some alien race put up there to trick us into thinking celestial bodies orbit around us. And no, I don’t know why they did it, I just know they maybe did it. They’re aliens. How are we supposed to know what they’re thinking. I can’t even figure out what Kellyanne
Conway is thinking and … wait! Do you think she might just be … an alien? The logic kind of proves it, doesn’t it???

All my life I’ve been told the tides are driven by the moon’s orbit. I accepted it without much question and maybe you did too. Third grade propaganda! No wonder Texas wants to rewrite those school books. Texans mostly don’t have tides except around the Gulf and those folks aren’t really Texans. Not that I think they’re aliens. Liberals maybe, which is close. But I live next to the Puget Sound and the tides come in and they go out. Twice a day!! How the hell do they do it? And WHO is doing it?? The aliens?

Humans sure couldn’t. Trump might think he can, but he can’t. Nobody on this earth could do it. So that leaves … no, not Kellyanne. Well, maybe Kellyanne, but more likely the aliens. In league with the Russians? I don’t know, but they might be. And if they might be, they probably are. Tomorrow, when my old man sends some new e-mails, I’ll find out the truth. I sure hope my old man isn’t one of the aliens cause that would mean a DNA test on me is going to be really really embarrassing.

The buzz down at the Diner this week revolved mostly about the British doc who had ‘successfully’ transplanted a human head. The Flathead table — the one usually dedicated to arcane discussions of 4 barrel carburetors, sandblasting techniques, after-market wiring and preferred waxes — was animated about this surgical breakthrough of the week.

“Where’d they get a donor head?” Fairlane Fred asked the assembled auto restorers and Little Jimmy said he’d read that the doctor had used cadavers.

“My god,” Barry exclaimed, “that’s like dropping a blown engine as a replacement. How about that, Tim?” he asked Tim Jensen at the end of the table. We all knew the story” Tim had spent a week hauling his old 396 out of a favorite restoration, then dropped a rebuilt in only to learn it too needed rebuilding, the block having a crack he’d missed, something the boyz would never let him live down, not if he lived to be a hundred and thirty and won the pole position at NASCAR.

“I guess they’ll be looking for donors now,” Wally said, “unless they’re gonna work on zombies first.”

“You volunteering?” Fred asked.

“No, I’d miss this ugly one way too much. Anyway, I’d need a place to hang my hat.”

“Kinda weird to think about, you ask me,” Tim said. “Although, I saw a guy who had a face transplant on TV last night talking to the wife of the guy who used to have that face. Gave me the heebie-jeebies, I tell you that.”

“So if you get a 2nd hand head,” Fred asked, “do you get some other person’s memories? Or do you get re-wired and have to start over?”

“Go ask Frankenstein,” Little Jimmy answered.

“The very first Deadhead,” I said. The boyz all turned toward me, 8 live heads pivoting as one. Fairlane shook his head and put his fork down solemnly. “Damn, Skeeter,” he said, “you left your own head back in the 60’s.”

I flushed a little, probably from that third coffee refill. “Yeah, maybe I’ll check Craigslist, see if there’s a fresh one, more up to date. Sure can’t get excited about a cadaver head.” I was pretty sure there was nobody there who’d be willing to swap.

Every Thanksgiving — without fail — our little nuclear unit would belly up to a dining room table loaded to the ceiling fan with a banquet Mom had slaved for two days to cook …. And we’d wait for the Old Man to raise a glass in toast. He’d give a short somewhat sincere thanks, and then he’d ask his predictable, inevitable question, the one his mother asked every Thanksgiving up in the most economically depressed region in Northern Maine where we all were born: “I wonder what the poor folks are doing today?”

You want to put a dull edge on the carving knife, I can’t think of a much quicker way. I know most of us this year are just thankful the elections are over, the mudslinging and the distortions are finished for, oh, a few months before the 2018 election cycle, the interminable TV and radio spots are blessedly replaced by pharmaceutical and car and deodorant ads and we can just return to our quiet monsoonal lives of quiet desperation. We can ratchet down the angst and the anger now. We can start shopping for Christmas. We can hibernate a bit.

But my Grandma, bless her kindly heart, was right to worry about those less fortunate, even though she wasn’t all that fortunate herself. Not by our modern standards that we simply take for granted as our God given American right. A full belly can lead pretty quick to tryptophanic complacency.

So when you say a prayer this Thanksgiving or make a toast over that fine Chablis and dive in for seconds on the turkey dressing, leave a little room. Not just for the desserts but for the folks who might be eating alone, who might not have much to eat, who might not have a lot to be thankful for. After all, they’re part of the family too.

Back before Global Warming became Global Climate Change and the South End became a tropical paradise, we sometimes had early winters. Real ones. The kind with windstorms and snowstorms. Days without power! Without TV!! Without the internet!!! I know what you’re thinking and yes, suicide rates went ballistic. Those were primitive times and only the tough survived. And the terminally dumb. If nothing else, it kept the population down. WAY down.

Many a Thanksgiving was spent in the cold and dark. Us Old Timers cooked our feasts on the woodstove and dined by candlelight. I know what you’re thinking and yes, pregnancy rates skyrocketed.

There was one particular Thanksgiving we had a major blizzard the day before, over a foot of snow, traffic in Seattle and Gomorrah stopped cold and the interstate became an icy parking lot. Stanwoodopolis seemed as remote as the North Pole to those of us who hadn’t bought Thanksgiving groceries ahead of time. Turkey Day promised to be a day of fasting, judging by the grim weather reports before the power finally failed.

But … our next door neighbors took pity and they gave us a snow goose from their freezer’s larder they’d hunted a few weeks earlier. If you want to know how the Pilgrims felt when the natives brought them a feast offering, we can tell you. That goose tasted like steak to us. That meal, with the oil lamps glowing and the world white with newfallen snow, was the one Thanksgiving we remember best.

I’m not advocating we all hunt snow goose to give to the South End Food Bank. But I do think we should all count our blessings. And even though the Hard Winters are a thing of the past for most of us, down here there are folks who still go hungry, not just on Thanksgiving, but all year long. Set a place at your heart’s table. And if you can, give more than just thanks this season.

Donald Trump, the man who claimed to grab his prey by their private parts, came out today with a tweet to Al Franken ridiculing the comedian turned statesman for his lewd and harassing behavior. Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, dismissed his own accusers as liars and political operatives. Bill Cosby plans to set up a support group for men alleged to have raped unconscious women. Bill Clinton did not have sex with that woman. An Ohio anti-LGBT legislator was found on top of another man in his office. Anthony Weiner just went to jail for falling on his own wiener, er, petard.

Boys boys boys. What are we gonna do with you men? I talk to women every day who tell the same sad story of you guys groping and harassing and expecting sexual submission. I gotta tell ya, I’m ashamed of our sex. We’re evidently shameless predators. And if you think it’s just friendly flirtation, c’mon, I’ve talked to a few of you who hate it when a gay guy hits on you. You feel queasy, uncomfortable, maybe even violated.
It’s a tough subject, sex. Intimate, primal, taboo and all the rest. Throw in some religion, some workplace politics, some power plays, add some provocative attire, some gamesmanship in navigating promotional opportunity, what you got is a whirlpool beneath a calm surface. What seemed a fine line suddenly becomes a gaping maelstrom that will suck down the unsuspecting. No innuendo intended here or implied.

I got a buddy who likes to play the ‘artist’ card. Meets an attractive woman and in that pseudo-European way he’s fostered over the years, doesn’t merely say hello or offer a small touch, no, he goes for the lips and unleashes a probing tongue. His target, new acquaintance, fresh victim, whatever you want to call her, usually responds with shocked surprise. But … she figures it’s harmless enough, after all, often times his wife is right there in the room, not something she might let loose a slap on the face and ruin the party, although … later she feels a bit, oh, violated. Artist or no artist. Boss or no boss. Co-worker or no co-worker. Relative or no relative. Friend or no friend.

Later she’ll shrug it off, maybe even make a joke of it. And this guy’s friends, myself included, say, well, that’s just old Ted. So by the end, we’re all complicit. I don’t want to say, “geez, Ted, knock off the dirty old man shit, buddy. Have a little respect. Some tact.” Of course, a few of these same victims become models for his nude sculptures. So you tell me….

Fine lines. Dangerous waters beneath. Nevertheless, the times are changing fast now, the buried assaults are surfacing, the rules are becoming clearer and the danger for those who never thought they applied to them anyway, well, good luck to you. Time for all of us to become feminists, boyz. Women are mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore. Let me repeat it for the tone deaf. Women are mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore. And Ted, the artist card won’t work now that you really are an old man. A dirty old man.

I’m sure smart boyz like Mark Zuckerberg think the internet will create a shining new day for Democracy, one where knowledge is a couple of key clicks away and ignorance is banished to the shadows of the bad old 20th Century. The Truth will set us free, isn’t that the adage? Privacy and ignorance will be a thing of the past and we’ll all celebrate in the public square of social media. We’ll vote from our laptops and smartphones with confidence that our virtual ballot not only counts, it’s based on public information available to every citizen. The Greeks could only wish …

Well, here we are barely begun in that next experiment in governance, one that Lincoln said tested whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. Lincoln, of course, was fighting the Civil War, and we’re 7 score and 7 years hence, still one country supposedly, embarked now in a new social experiment, one conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all facts are probably suspect.

It wasn’t meant to be this way, Mark would surely say, it was meant to bind us all in an ever-tightening circle of knowledge, a kind of future religious connectivity . We could share our innermost thoughts moment by moment, send photos instantly, watch together kittens play with balls of twine in hilarious videos. The database would grow exponentially and the algorithms would sort it out in nano-seconds. One family, one nation. Cue the violins. Open the curtains. Let the sunlight play on our upturned faces.

Like most religions, Fakebook was based on flawed faith, just another Truth that stands in opposition to all the other Truths. My God is the True God, yours is an idiot, an infidel, an illiterate. If you don’t believe it, check my God’s LIKES. Impressive, aren’t they? Count em up, the truth is in the numbers. Just like democracy. The voters can’t be wrong.

The Russians haven’t hacked our election. They didn’t create bots that sent viral ‘facts’ to millions of Fakebook believers. They wouldn’t do that, would they? But … what does it matter if it was the commies or the alt-right or Breitbart or Fox News or some sad little man in a basement somewhere? Or the current President of the United States? We’ve made truth relative. We’ve made knowledge bankrupt. We’ve made a mockery of democracy.

What would Honest Abe say to this? Would he be photoshopping now? Instagramming? Would he tweet to this nation of social media: believe what you want, it’s all good? I think he would understand we are met on a great battle field once again and that we need to dedicate ourselves to the proposition that this government, of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. LOL.