The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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. Trump’s gonna get rid of all that, 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.

You maybe know this already: we live in a post-truth world. This is great news for advertisers, politicians and pharmaceuticals. Not so great for parents, the IRS or most newspapers. I suppose we’ll get accustomed to this after awhile, but it may take me longer than I’d like to fully embrace this new paradigm. Buyer beware, citizens be afraid.

Gullibility, as is well known to the Nigerians who frequently ask me for funds so that they can secure a million dollars which they would be happy to share with me if I help them, exists in each of our greedy little hearts. We want to support our beliefs with facts … and if the facts are a tad suspect, well, facts are facts. Says so right here in black and white. A couple of days ago some character, acting on tweeted information that a pizza joint in D.C. was really a pederast ring run by Hillary, took up arms and decided to take things into his own hands.

I know, it’s baffling to me too how anyone with half a brain would believe this is true. But this guy took his half brain and an assault rifle down to the pizza parlor to stop that sex traffic mid-topping hold the cheese. Today I saw where Trump’s nominee for National Security Advisor, Gen. Flynn tweeted:
U decide – NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc…MUST READ! http://truepundit.com/breaking-bombshell-nypd-blows-whistle-on-new-hillary-emails-money-laundering-sex-crimes-with-children-child-exploitation-pay-to-play-perjury/ …
Mama Mia! What can you say? This is the dude who will, if confirmed, be in charge of the security of this country. I wouldn’t let the creep be a pizza deliveryman, but then, I’m not going to be in on the confirmation hearings, am I? The next president is the Uber-Liar-in-Chief, after all, so why not fill the cabinet with tweeters and know-nothings? We just need to change a few of the presidential myths, is all. George Washington didn’t fess up to chopping down the cherry tree. He just told his ma the neighbors cut it down for firewood. And, Mom, it was an English walnut, probably good to be rid of a Tory tree anyway. Can I have more dessert?

The South End Advisory Committee met last night in emergency session. The last time they convened a similar gathering was back in 2001 following the Trade Tower attacks when an alarmed citizenry demanded they beef up our shoreline defenses to counter what, at the time, seemed like imminent terrorist incursions. Since then the South End has pretty much kept its head in the sand, so to speak, ignoring the Great Recession (which seemed to most of us just a continuation of our unemployment woes), the Iraq War (we’re pretty much all too old to enlist) and the rise of ISIS (it’s hard to behead those with theirs buried in the beach). But sometimes events arise that demand attention, demand action, demand a committee meeting.

And certainly this was one of those times. Now that the Trump Tweet presidency has left the station, small groups around the country have declared themselves Sanctuary Zones. Sanctuary cities, sanctuary universities, sanctuary Starbucks, sanctuary nursing homes, sanctuary daycare centers. The question on last night’s table: should we declare ourselves a sanctuary too? Ethel Birmbach, current President of the Council, called the meeting to order. “Deportation is not an option,” she declared almost immediately. “These are our neighbors and friends, not our enemies.”

Randy Primplucker, a realtor for WindyRear Realty and the only member on the council actually born on the South End, argued for a quick vote “to protect our neighbors”, but Betsy Birdcall took him to task. “We don’t really know who some of these people are, Randy. Sure, you might have sold them their property, but beyond a credit check, how do you know what their backgrounds are? I’m not arguing for detention camps or even forced deportation, I’m just saying we shouldn’t assume there’s nothing nefarious going on in our community. The government won’t be looking out for us, that’s for sure.”

“These people already have detention camps,” Ralph Van Vleet practically shouted. “They put up their own gates! What are they hiding behind those gated walls? Why are they so nervous? Who are they trying to protect? Who do they think they’re fooling?”

“For godsake, Ralph,” Patty Plankton replied. “These people pay the lion’s share of our property taxes. Let’s don’t charge in half-cocked.”
Ethel pounded her hard rubber mallet on the desk that served as podium. “Calm down, everybody,” she commanded. “Randy, we all know you have financial ties to these folks. Maybe you should recuse yourself on this issue. This is way too important to have monetary issues clouding our judgement.” Randy protested meekly, but finally acquiesced.

In the end the Council voted 5 to 3 to declare the South End a Sanctuary. Up in the gated communities the 1% breathed a collective sigh of relief that, for the time being at least, their taxes would not go any higher. At least not until after the Trump presidency or a turnover in the South End Council. Down here we protect our own.

Good news, everybody!! Great news, actually! I found my sense of humor. It was laying half scorched down by my burn pile, the slash I’d burned a week or more ago, sooty from the ashes and a little charred. I saw it peeking out from where it had been covered after the monsoons we’ve been having daily washed the ash partly off. Looked like a half burnt branch, but I recognized it immediately. It must have fallen in the fire the day I torched that pile.

I have to admit it’s like getting back your shadow, but darker. To be expected, I suppose, after a close call with cremation. You’d lean a little toward black humor yourself. But hoo boy, is it ever good to find that slightly crispy funny bone. Yesterday I was reading about Trump lambasting Clinton and the Greens for calling for a Wisconsin recount. So sad. A shame. But then he tweets that if the election hadn’t been rigged, he’d have won the popular vote by millions. I laughed out loud, I laughed until I hurt. I did not laugh until I cried and that is the best part.

Yesterday I read where his personal advisor Kellyanne (I know, she’s an oxymoron) got on the Sunday talk shows to denounce even the possibility that Trump’s nemesis Romney would be considered for a post as Sec. of State. This is the vampire woman — I have this on reliable rumor from a newsfeed translated from the Russian— who files down her incisors pre-dawn daily. The woman who ran the Ted Cruz PAC calling the kettle black. I spurted coffee out my nose. My stomach hurt from laughing so hard, it really did.

It gets better. Melania announced she won’t move to Washington DC. No gold toilets in the White House. Last night I listened to the Miami Cubans celebrating the death of Fidel. One woman said she came to Florida when she was 9 years old and she hoped to go back before she died. Then she wished Trump would reinstate the embargo Obama had lifted. The reporter simply nodded solicitously, a terrible tragedy, his demeanor suggested. My grin nearly took my ears off.

Once again I’m expecting some good laughs in the news now. We got four years of comedy coming up like a Netflix serial that I can binge on until it goes into syndication. Today’s episode: that black redneck Milwaukee sheriff who hated the Black Lives Matter protests a few months back, a possible nominee for Homeland Security. The jokes just keep on coming….

The other day I went looking for my sense of humor. I searched everywhere I could think of. I looked in all the closets, checked under the laundry, dug through cabinets and behind the sink, under the beds, in drawers I hadn’t opened in years. Nothing. It had to be here somewhere, it couldn’t have wandered off on its own. I’m sure I just put it down absent mindedly and walked off so if I retraced my steps, maybe I would run into it.

It’s been a few days and I’ve been to the studio, the shop, the woodsheds, back on the trails, down to the beach. Nothing. Not a trace, not even the shadow of a smile. It’s been raining nearly constantly lately and I’m worried I left it outside where it’s shrunk down to something small enough for the slugs to slime over, something I might not even want to find much less use again, just some icky sog of a remnant nobody would recognize.

The shortest day of the year is coming up and I really need to find that funny bone. The sun comes up about noon and starts sinking immediately, the rain drips off our clogged gutters, the storms keep blowing down trees in the back 40 and the news is too bleak to listen to anymore … at least without that lost sense of humor. I checked on E-bay to see if maybe someone had stolen mine and now was selling it, used, slight wear, free shipping. Not only didn’t I find mine, I didn’t find anyone offering a reasonable replacement.

Although, someone from Wisconsin had one for sale. “Funny bone, never used, won’t be needing it. Voted Trump. Best offer.” Bidding started at $25 with a $250 shipping charge. I noticed it had yet to get a single bid even though it had been listed since the election. The idea of an unused, nearly new sense of humor was seriously tempting. And at this point of desperation the exorbitant price was almost acceptable. But I’m going to hold out for one that’s more tried and true. That one from Wisconsin, I bet it’s dark and mean spirited. You know, if it even works. I worry that its idea of funny is to belittle and bully, then laugh out loud at the victim’s misery. Just make fun of others who are different, whose religion isn’t the same, who have a disability. I’m not sure how much I’d be willing to pay for that. At least not yet.

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep looking for mine. It’s got to be here somewhere. I just worry if I don’t locate it soon, if I find it after prolonged inactivity, it’ll be like my flashlight batteries, pretty much dead. Inauguration Day is coming right up. I’m going to need to find it before then. That, or buy the one on E-bay and take my chances.

Pulling the Wool

Sure, you’ve had two weeks to recover from the shock of this year’s presidential election debacle, two weeks to shake the hangover, two weeks to get back up and move forward … but … you still can’t get your head around it, you still want to wake up from that nightmare, you still crawl out each morning and realize, oh yeah, it’s a new day in America. The rich, surprise surprise, are going to get richer and you, yup, you know what crumbs you’ll be getting. It’s a new day, all right and it will last at least four years. Or maybe — I know you can’t say it out loud and I know you don’t want me to either — maybe this will be the rest of your life.

My brother swore an oath to go 60 days with a moratorium on talking about, commenting about or thinking about Donald J. Trump. I tried to Move On myself, took a vacation, pulled the sheet up a little higher. Most of you have too. And if I hear another yahoo tell me about the five stages of grief, believe me, they will get to pass through them in a furiously short time. I mean, shut your front door! And don’t talk to me about ditching the Electoral College!! You got more odds of emigrating to Mars than passing a constitutional amendment. We couldn’t even get the womens’ rights amendment through, fat chance of the misogynists who won with the College voting to make the next election easier for you next time. And this talk of the Electors switching their votes to Hillary for the good of the country….geez, c’mon, consult with a Realist.

Today the Green Party ponied up the money to recount Wisconsin. Check the voting machines, see if there’s a paper trail, watch for Russian hackers, look for malfeasance. God help us if there was a discrepancy in the vote counting in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan. Trump always claimed it was rigged. Course, now he’s singing a happier tune, nothing new here since the election and his continual flip flopping. This from the man who sez it like it is.

Ever since the economic meltdown and the Great Recession, I’ve wondered why people weren’t in the streets with pitchforks. Wall Street particularly. Why the populace wasn’t up in arms crying for some justice. Why some CEO’s weren’t dragged from the High Suites and made examples of. It is the utmost irony that the beneficiary of that pent up rage was a billionaire non-politician with a potty mouth and a mean streak. The boy won, I’ll give him that, but the mob expects some swift action to alleviate their grievances. I suspect a few months into his term, they’ll realize politicians fudge the truth, they might even lie, but politicians at least know the difference. They voted this guy in with the slimmest of hopes he would shake things up based on his campaign promises. Fat chance he’ll get away with that phony baloney. Unless, of course, most of the rest of the country has pulled the sheets up higher too.

Don’t ask me why, but every year or so I get this sudden impulse to get my hair cut. I hate getting my hair cut so about any excuse in the world not to get it cut works to dissuade me from the scissors and comb torture. My last trim was so poorly done that even after a mere six months it was driving me crazy. I avoided the bathroom mirror, I kept my hat on more than usual, I thought about taking a whack at it myself. So when I was picking up a plaque I’d ordered at Mr. T’s Trophy Shop in Mt. Vernon yesterday, I noticed a shabby building next door with the barber pole outside and walked on over. One chair. One barber. Old school before the SuperCuts and Hairmaster chains rolled in.

My new barber, a fellow named George was sitting in the half dark and I asked if he maybe had time for a haircut and he said sure, come on in, Bro, take a seat. We bantered a bit and then we got down to it, how much off, how short, behind the ears, all that barber lingo and I said I wanted a lot off, behind the ears, trimmed any way he thought worked, I didn’t much care. And I didn’t. It’s a new day in America and maybe a skinhead look would be appropriate in the Trump regime. Can’t beat em, join em. My barber George looked like he already had.

But we didn’t talk politics. Instead he launched into a story about a buddy his age, about 50, I’d guess, who had met a woman, “a ‘fine’ woman, Bro, about 30, who had a fantasy of making it with my friend in a barber chair.” The very chair I was now parked in. He said it was okay with him so long as he kept everything clean afterwards, but he had one request, he wanted the girlfriend’s panties left behind when they were finished acting out their little barberchair bucket list item.

I know, I know, you might’ve considered leaving about then, but I had made my mind up about getting my hair cut and that urge might not come again for many months, best to get this thing done right now, sex story or no sex story. “So next morning I come in,” George is saying, snipping like Trump tweeting at my locks, “and sure enough, the place is spic and span and there (he points at the table in front of us) is a pair of pink panties. My wife never comes in the shop here in the morning, but of course that morning she does and first thing she sees is that pair of panties on a bottle of hair tonic and she asks who do those belong to? I tell her they’re not hers so mind her own damn business.”

I know, I know, but it’s kind of late to be quitting mid-trim. And anyway, maybe you didn’t notice, but this is a new age in America. No more political correctness.
Those days are relegated to the same place my shorn hair will soon be deposited, the wastebasket. George snips and cuts and says, “I saw the video they made. She was fine, Bro, fine.” I said, “They filmed it?” “Oh, yeah, the whole thing. It was something. Something, Bro. I watched it twice. But later things went bad, you know, like that movie, you know the one? Where the woman won’t let go and things turn ugly? What’s that called? Fatal attraction, yeah, that’s it, fatal attraction. Turned ugly, Bro.” George shook his head sadly, handed me a mirror and asked what I thought. “Works for me,” I said, too nearsighted to see the back of my head and in no mood to care anyway.

You don’t get this kind of banter in Great Clips, let me assure you. This is barbering when barbering was a man’s world, not a salon, not a styling studio. Hunting magazines on the table, not People and Us. Playboys, not Women’s World or Good Housekeeping. Hell if I know whether I’ll ever go back, but I know this: if Donald’s making America great again, George will do just fine. Know what I mean, Bro?

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, 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.

Back home here at Blog Central the wailing and gnashing of teeth continues non-stop, the phone keeps ringing, the e-mails are shrill and frightened, the news cycle runs its usual 24/7 with stories ramping up the national anxiety. The scare tactics of the media certainly paint a chilly winter here. Deportations, climate warming denials, deregulation, rescinding trade agreements, tossing out Roe v. Wade, Rudy Giuliani as Sec. of State??, the list goes on and on, the empire is crumbling, the center cannot hold and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

There are marches in the streets of our major cities. Even the high school kids are pouring out to protest. The Trumpsters are taunting the minorities, figuring, apparently, that the country is now back in white Christian control. The Democrats are in full route, the Republicans in full battle cry. No one has told them Donald is no more a Republican than he is a Christian or a pal of the blue collar worker.

A few friends are considering emigration. For some reason not clear to me, New Zealand seems to be the favorite landing spot. Why not Canada? They’re a stone’s throw away with the added attraction of a liberal leader. Too cold maybe? I have friends who are certain their jobs will be destroyed, friends who have decided to delay having children, friends who predict the stock market will crash and a world wide Depression will follow. Last night was a Super Moon. Who knows what malevolence will follow such a portent. Who knows what a right wing Supreme Court will do. Who knows who this Donald Trump really is.

Jeez, take a pill. Take a deep breath. Take a long walk. The world as we know it is not going to end. Remember that line about shrinking government to a size we could drown in a bathtub? Well, trust me, easier to say than do. America is a big fat cruise liner. Turning it in a different direction takes awhile. Stopping it, even longer. But c’mon, we lived through Richard Nixon, the Viet Nam War, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and the Cheney mob and the Great Recession, the Iraq War and its weapons of mass destruction. And now you think it looks worse? Maybe we thought the Obama Years offered hope. Same sex marriage and gay rights. A black president. The possibility of immigration reform. Carbon footprint reduction. No more foreign wars.

Ho ho, ha ha. Presidents come and go. The real power brokers stay in town. Money talks, as a buddy told me long ago, and bullshit walks. We got a billionaire as president. Maybe we should’ve seen him coming. He says he’s not beholden to Wall Street. We believed him, I guess. Now we all get to take a walk.
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