The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Back when the neighbors had dairy cows, we used to get our milk direct from the udder. Unpasteurized, no growth hormone, no antibiotic whole milk. Course, back then we were told by the FDA and the food scientists that this would increase our chances of heart disease and diabetes. But …! If we took a baby aspirin a day, we could lessen those chances. Sort of like driving over the speed limit but wearing a seat belt. You get in a wreck, you might survive.

You’re as old as me, you maybe remember 5th grade food pyramids. Meat and poultry up at the top, high in protein, fruits and vegetables down toward the middle, candy and pop taboo. In the 60’s we learned sugar was poison and alcohol too and so was red meat and ditto on salt. We started drinking skim milk, substituted saccharin for sugar and oleomargarine for butter. Skip the eggs, pass the fiber.

This week I read a study showing that people like myself who drink high fat milk have decreased heart disease and less risk for diabetes. Fats, it turns out, aren’t all bad. Aspirin a day, so they tell me now, isn’t maybe so good for you if you aren’t already at risk for a heart attack. Butter is better for you than margarine. And too little salt, well, you need salt. You want to live longer, drink a glass or two of wine every day. And even if you don’t live longer, you’ll be happier.

I got friends who won’t eat fruit unless it’s in a pop tart. Some others wouldn’t eat broccoli or cauliflower unless you waterboarded them first. My brother thinks 1% milk is cream and it would kill him in a week. I know folks who won’t go within a country mile of an egg, might as well be lobbing grenades to the heart. Food, I think more and more, is a faith based religion. Easier just to eat Cheetos and Snickers bars with a couple of vitamin supplements, all the nutrition you need right there in a pill.

Me, I always figured the fresher food was, the better. The more natural, the better. I like my food grown on a tree or coming up out of the ground. I like meat that grazed in a grassy pasture and I love fish that swam wild in a river and I’m crazy about seafood that wasn’t farmed. Hell, I like all kinds of food, at least the kind that isn’t dried out, chopped up, reprocessed and flavor enhanced with enough preservatives to last past a nuclear war. Is it good for me? I think maybe so. The doctors and the health specialists, the scientists and the FDA, well, some years yes, some years no. Hard to say for sure anymore. So I’ll just stick with the tried and true, food made by nature, not by labs. Call me old fashioned. Call me outdated. Call me past my expiration date. But … call me for dinner.

Johnny Fever lives down the road from me in the house where he was born, a 1920’s cabin that’s been added onto multiple times and that he inherited when his mother died. Johnny’s about 50, going on 110, got some health issues and some serious mental ones that meds keep under control. Johnny, though, doesn’t like the mood stabilizers he takes to keep him from running without a governor on his engine. When he goes off his meds, he revs up to a high pitched scream, a condition he prefers to the blah moods his drugs maintain.

Johnny’s an old old friend, a brilliant guy who can be dumb as a box of rocks. Apparently he can’t tell the difference. And I’m having a harder and harder time myself. Bi-polarity has a way of blurring those lines. Johnny’s long suffering wife has basically thrown up her hands. She doesn’t even ask me now to try and talk him into taking his medications when he’s flying high — she just collects his credit cards and explains best as she can to their three kids, daddy’s gone bonkers again. Mr. Hyde is here now but Dr. Jekyll is coming back. The doctor, well, he’s not half as interesting, just watches a lot of TV all day long. You watch TV all day long, you’ll become pretty damn boring.

Johnny stopped by my place this morning. It was 4 AM and he’d called 911 when I didn’t get to the front door right away, informing the sheriff he had an emergency: his car needed a jump, dead battery. He had airline tickets at SeaTac in a few hours, non refundable. I cursed, I hollered at him, I even pushed him when he got 4 inches from my face, then I gave up and got my truck, grabbed the jumper cables and drove us to his car, the one he’d left his headlights on the night before.

“Where you headed, John?” I grumbled. “I’m getting the hell OUT of this place,” he shouted over both our engines, then laughed maniacally, not a laugh I much like. I could see heads looking down at us from the upstairs windows.

John’s on his way now, wherever he’s going. “Thanks for the jump, old buddy, old friend,” he’d hollered out the open window as he rolled out his drive, “see you in hell.” A friend in need isn’t necessarily a friend in deed. When he comes back, he’ll be in hell, all right, and I’ll be here too.

Every once in awhile I get wind of another town that thinks it would be a good idea to arm the teachers in their schools. Having been a teacher for a very short career, I probably would’ve liked carrying a sidearm. Cut down on a lot of backtalk, for sure. And saved the cut-ups a long trip to the principal’s office. Course, when I think about it calmly, seems sort of harsh to inflict capital punishment from the front of a classroom. They are, after all, children.

I guess being Americans and all, the idea of a fully armed populace is appealing. You don’t hear many stories how some hijacker or bank robber met his match with a Dirty Harry packing heat, but that could change quick if we just advocated for universal ‘conceal carry’. Probably take some collateral damage, planes decompressing in a shoot-out at 30,000 feet, 7-11 customers caught with their Big Gulps in a withering crossfire. But it wouldn’t take long for us pacifists to realize we need to return fire ourselves, simple law of survival in the urban jungles of America.

We’ve maybe seen too many Westerns, all those cowboys with six shooters slapping leather on their hip and a Winchester in a scabbard beside the saddle. The folks down in Malheur rode in fully armed and they can’t understand why the Feds and the troopers and the sheriff won’t surrender. Or at least negotiate to give them the range land they say belongs to them, these folks up from Utah. Too many Westerns, like I said. Then, a month into their occupation, one dead and most under arrest, the remaining gang wanted amnesty before they left. Lucky for them the bureaucrats whose headquarters they liberated and whose jobs they disrupted didn’t take their own 2nd amendment rights as seriously. Be like letting the kids in my old classroom carry live ammo — for sure my odds would go way down.

The burning topic down at the Diner this week was bathrooms. Mississippi and North Carolina had passed legislation to the effect that women’s bathrooms were only for women born women and men’s bathrooms were … well, you can deduce the rest. The bathroom in the Diner is for both since they only have one restroom. Which is a step up from the Tyee Store. The Store has an outhouse. Concrete block with plumbing, even got a sink. Unisex too just like the Diner’s.

I guess the folks in Ol Miss and the Tarheel State got their important issues resolved, now they can turn their attentions to public bathrooms. Pastor Paul preaches down at the Little Church in the Ravine that homosexuals and the deviants who change sex are the root cause of the moral decline on the South End. Me, I’m not so sure. Heroin addiction ranks pretty high on my list of problems. Maybe wife abuse too. Even crab poaching seems more a problem than where folks tinkle.

Walter was making the argument at the Diner’s corner table that men would be able to use women’s toilets and rapes would skyrocket. Brenda, pouring the table’s third round of refills, laughed out loud. “Walter, you are a crack-up.” Walter stopped in mid-rant and asked her what she meant. She said, “I mean, think about it. A guy who’s changed sex from a woman to a man is going to use the men’s room. A man who’s switched to a woman is going to use a stall now. In the women’s restroom. “

“That’s right, that’s the whole point. Now you got a natural born guy in with the women.” “Yeah, but Walter, if you make the woman who’s changed into a man use the woman’s room, you got a guy with the parts a rapist needs in with the women. How does that help your argument?”

Walter thought about it a half minute. Finally he said it just wasn’t right. It just wasn’t natural. It just ought to be illegal. “Men should just stay men, for the luvva God. And use their own damn bathroom.”

As usual, we didn’t resolve the issue that morning. But when Walt got up to relieve himself of four cups of coffee, Little Jimmy called back to him to be sure and lock the door. “Don’t want any mishaps, Walt.” “And leave the seat down,” Harry hollered. “Some of us girls might be using it next.”

Every blue moon I get this masochistic urge to read the Comment section below a news story, you know, see what my fellow citizens are thinking. Maybe it’s because I don’t have a cellphone with text messaging capabilities so I get the digital equivalent of cabin fever, some kind of isolationist feeling that needs assuaging with input from total strangers. I suppose I could go hang out at the mall, but the mall is 40 miles away and I don’t need anything else from a few dozen stores under one roof.

Me and the mizzus watched the ‘Motorcycle Diaries’ last night, the account of Che Guevara before he became a Marxist revolutionary, just a med student who hops aboard a buddy’s Norton motorcycle in 1952 and heads north from Argentina to Peru, pretty much penniless, pretty much at the mercy of the kindness of strangers. So today I wondered what I could find out about Che after this trip. Kerouac headed into the mountains to sit fire watch in the Forest Service towers in the North Cascades. Che went into Cuba and was instrumental in overthrowing Batista.

I found another article after the first bios whose point was that Guevara was a cold blooded commie killer. Fair enough. Maybe a little biased, but hey, free country and all. So then I decided to see what the peanut gallery thought of this article and you can maybe guess, it being political hunting season these days, the decibel level ratcheted right up to eardrum damage levels. Folks have a lot of built up bile is all I can say. Only took a few comments before we got to anti-Obama and Bush-bashing, then the personal attacks on the commenters and finally I thought maybe I’d had enough for the morning.

My father, who usually sends me Tea Party e-mails still questioning birth certificate authenticity and Muslim affiliations, sent me instead a nice group of photos, mostly of cute animals, tulip fields in bloom, artistic shots of dancers, mostly nice fluffy stuff. Not really my cup of herbal tea, but better than the usual vitriol he passes on to ruin my day.

Curious how the Comments would go on beautiful photos, expecting only sappy enthusiasm for the beauty of the shots, imagine my surprise to find the same trolls blasting away at everything from animal abuse to anti-sunset sentiments. Here’s one, I guess in response to some ice skaters in formation: “at the rate the migrants are arriving, in ten years the Italian skating team will be all black.” Nice, attack the refugees and throw in some racism too. Here’s one after the cute picture of the tiger cub: “ I am disturbed and sickened by the photo of the tiger cub in his cage. HOW DISGUSTING THAT YAHOO WOULD POST THIS PHOTO AS JUST A CUTESY PHOTO OF A LITTLE CUB IS ALL THE MORE VILE!!!” Well, it was a picture of a circus animal….
Or this in response to who knows what: “Silly little tart, should have broke her neck.” And: “I’ll bet he’s even worse in bed!” Okay, I don’t have a clue really about what either of these are referencing, but they’re pissed, I get that. What I do know is I’m going to have to ask my old man to quit sending me these cutesy photos. I think I prefer the vitriolic poisonous e-mails. At least they come without further comments.

The South End Assembly of the Profligates is fighting the Good Fight for their religious freedom, hallelujah! The infidels are at the gate and by God, they aren’t taking secular attacks sitting down, not on your life!! Their old time religion, based on texts transcribed from the original German of Claus Wermuth’s Nostradamus prophecies, serves as their guide to all things worldly. And now the government demands they violate their fundamentals, their creed, their belief system.

“This will not stand!” Preacher Ezekiel declared the day the Supreme Court ruled homosexuals could not be discriminated against. “The blasphemers will be smited!” he roared and the congregation stamped their feet in joyous approval. Amen!

The Assembly of the Profligates has more than gay issues to fight. Their religion relegates women to helpmates and persons not Caucasian to second class status. They ban all forms of music, even muzak, and the banjo is reviled above all other infernal noise-makers as the Bark of the Beast. This does not bode well for the South End String Band, apparently purveyors of filth and depravity whose members include women and people of mixed heritage.

Now personally I like religions about equally. Which I thought made me non-discriminatory, but might only be non-discriminating. When the mizzus dropped in at the Island Cupcake Emporium next to Reflux Realty’s South End satellite branch to order a special birthday cake for me in the shape of a 5 string banjo, my chosen instrument of destruction, well, all hell broke loose. Jennifer, who owns the bakery and, it turns out, is a devotee of the Assembly of the Profligates and their All-Seeing Premonitions, well Jennifer told her she could take her sick request to Stanwood and Gomorrah, no way was she going to bake a Bark of the Beast birthday cake. “Take your disease to the Erotic Bakery,” she howled. “If they’ll make penis cakes, they’ll bake you a banjo. But I don’t make either!!”

Well, I guess we could’ve filed a civil rights lawsuit, we could hire a good attorney, go to court, make our point and probably end up with a saliva-filled banjo birthday cake on my 75th. The mizzus compromised instead. I sure won’t foget that phallic German chocolate 3 layer birthday cake any time soon. Maybe, Lord willing, I’ll get a banjo cake next year. Amen to that.

Yesterday a rocket landed on a platform floating out at sea about the size of my shack. Landed nose up, thrusters down. Buck Rogers to earth, Buck Rogers to earth, come in earth… The future, as we seldom say down here in the savannahs of the South End, is here. Dick Tracy videos on our watches, robots building cars that drive themselves, computers designing the next generation of computers, space stations and satellites orbiting overhead, drones delivering bombs and Amazon packages, probes that have left our solar system and out into the galaxy beyond — this has all happened in half my lifetime.

Me, I’m still burning wood for heat. I know, you’re surprised I’m not hunting mastodons for meat. Maybe in a few years, you know, after they clone a few and re-introduce them into the swamps here. We got cell towers dotting the landscape now even though I don’t own a cellphone. Or a smarty one either. The dumb one I have seems somehow more apropos for my Neanderthal lifestyle. My techno pals say it’s time to move into the 21st Century so they can text message where to meet me for a cold one at the nearest tavern. A woman in a huge black SUV drove across her lane right at me yesterday and at the last moment swerved to avoid killing us both. I could see the phone resting on her steering wheel where a message coming in or going out meant more than suicide by text.

I know if I can live long enough without becoming a traffic statistic, I might not miss some more of this science fiction coming true, but as you can tell I’m kind of a pessimist when it comes to the future I see ahead. I wouldn’t trust a robot for one nano-second, not when they get smarter than us. If there’s life in outer space, I figure we’ll be a food source. The aliens won’t think that Chuck Berry soundtrack we sent them is going to save the human race. Wars aren’t going to get better because we fight them with drones, c’mon, who’s kidding who? The kids growing up today in the digital world aren’t going to care much about the real one. Global warming? We’ll dither until it’s too late. Maybe we’ll adapt. Although … if I’m any role model for that, good luck to the rest of ya.

I went in for my bi-yearly haircut today. In the old days I’d haul in to Stanwoodopolis at Carl’s Barber Shop for a clipping and gossip and heated debates. Sadly, those days are long gone and Carl’s retired from his long tonsorial career. Back then I didn’t mind waiting for a turn in the leather swivel chair, mostly an excuse to put a finger into the political winds.

Now I’m forced to go to the chain haircut joints. Salons, I guess they call em. They’re quick, painless and anonymous. They take your phone and name, but not for socializing, strictly for data-mining, frequency of visits, favorite hair gel maybe. At the door of Great Clips I was asked even before I took my hat off if I’d made an Online Appointment. No, I said, do I need one? Not at all, I was told.

But … a couple of folks who had made an online appointment but who hadn’t arrived just yet, were before me. Be about 20 minutes. “Do you have a cellphone,” my would be stylist asked, telling me next visit I could be one of the favored few. Wouldn’t have to wait 20 minutes next time. Mrs. Jenkins, my first grade teacher, used to make her point to us ignoramuses in the exact same sing-song voice. I didn’t like it then and I sure as gel didn’t care for it 60 years later. Call me irascible, but I’m not sitting in the chrome and mirror sterility of a chain haircutting factory more than 20 seconds. Twenty minutes is inconceivable. I mean, look at the magazine rack. Us and People? Kill me with a scissors now!

I headed for the exit, heads newly coiffed turning to ogle this ogre. “Will you be coming back in 20 minutes?” my headhunter asked, sensing customer dissatisfaction. I said no. “It’s only 20 minutes,” she explained, obviously figuring since I’d waited 6 months for the next haircut already, 20 minutes was a blink in my tonsorial universe. “Come back and see us again,” she said, half a question. “I will,” I said, “soon as I get a cellphone.” She knew — and I knew too — I’d have hair down to my toenails by them.

Little Walter, Big Walter’s oldest boy, was sucking on a Marlboro, one boot up on the chrome bumper of Harry’s newly restored ’64 Nova, waving his can of Pabst in the ketone-laced atmosphere of the Tyee Paint and Body Shop. He was addressing the assembled masses on this particular Friday afternoon, the boyz’ favorite day. Not because it signified the end of a work week; after all, most of us layabouts are unemployed, self-employed or just employment challenged. Naw, we just like to remember when Friday was PayDay and Friday night was a night of freedom. Now everyday is a day of freedom and it seems like a subtle form of slavery.

“This country,” Little Walt was saying, “went down the crapper when we started giving people all this free stuff. Socialism, that’s what it’s called, and it killed folks’ incentive to work.” Little Walter has been unemployed for most of his adult life. He’s currently laid off from the hardwood mill over in Arlington and for the past year he’s been living off the unemployment comp he gets plus some loans from his old man. Big Walter isn’t happy about this, but he places the blame squarely on the ‘ruined’ economy. He let the boy live in the spare bedroom of his double-wide and now he has to feed the kid too and fight over what programs they watch on his 50 inch flat screen entertainment center. They both have beefs.

“You talking about that tax break we gave Boeing?” Terry asked. Terry is the kind of guy who, if he knows someone is a hypochondriac, asks them how their health is, what we on the South End call a Pot Stirrer. He doesn’t really take a side, he just wants to light a fire.

“Hell no, I’m not talking about a tax break!! I’m talking about giving these people who don’t work for a living everything they need to keep on not working for a living, that’s what I’m talking about.” He crushed his Pabst can in his right hand and beer foamed out the top and onto Harry’s new paint job. Harry said Hey Man and Walter grabbed his dirty handkerchief and Quickly wiped off the suds.

Terry said, “You must be talking about those people on unemployment compensation then. Folks sitting around drinking and not looking for honest work. You mean people like that?”

Well, you can maybe guess where that conversation went. It’s just another day loitering on the South End, debating the issues of our time, nothing much better to do than drink beer and chit chat with the neighbors. Somewhere else they got wars and refugees, they got terrorists and beheadings. People starve, people are killed, people live hand to mouth. I don’t know much, but I know this. Things here aren’t too bad, they aren’t really bad at all. You ask me, and I know you’d hate to, it seems like complaining is damn close to a sin.

Like a lot of you, I get a news feed compliments of my internet. In my case I get Yahoo News. Well named! Being a news junkie, I thought at first this would be great, an up-to-the-nano-second breaking news report, keep me abreast of world events, the latest Trump polls, hurricane forecasts and imminent nuclear war. Alas, this isn’t exactly how it has played out.

Just for instance, here’s what’s on my Yahoo News right now. They got some coverage of the Brussels bombing, what you would expect, right? Next we have a flash that Sarah Palin is signing on for some Judge Judy gig. Hot dog. Tom and Gisele, who I haven’t got a clue who they might be, have ‘an insane diet when they go on vacation.’ I was afraid to look into what they might be eating away from their ordinary home meals. There’s a man who says he slashed a woman because she was white. Okay, that sounds bad. Two girls thought they were straight until they met each other. They were white girls and they weren’t slashed. I guess that’s good. There’s a list of 17 fast food restaurant flops. I bet there are even more…. Yolanda Foster went bra-less. Can’t say I know Yolanda, but I was tempted to peek.

The Supreme Court had its first tie since Scalia died. Bet it won’t be the last one. There’s an article on how to escape from duct tape when you’re kidnapped. I really should read that one. There’s another one about Hillary’s e-mail problem and how she should really drop out of the race. I only see two or three versions a day of that. Benghazi is pretty frequent too. Here’s one about parents rallying around a teacher who made racist comments on social media. Always good to side with the racists, I guess.

Michael Jackson’s kids aren’t going to get their inheritance, apparently. Not sure why, but not sure I care either. You can watch what happens when a piece of paper is folded 7 times under a hydraulic press. I suspect it looks the way my head feels.

Well, if ignorance is bliss, I’m thinking I might just give it a try. But I bet ignorance looks a lot like my Yahoo News. And bliss it really isn’t. Or maybe I’ll just let Judge Sarah decide.