The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Before the heady days of internet shopping, we had Bryant Hardware. You got some impossible to find esoteric gizmo, you could probably find it down at Bryants. Or at least Ma Bryant could. If she couldn’t, trust me, Joe Google couldn’t either. And if Joe couldn’t find it, trust me again, you’d pay Top Dollar for one when you discovered it in an antique store.

My piston driven well pump quit pumping water about 6 months after I bought my palace. My water was down over 100 feet in a hand dug hole 3 feet in diameter. The pump ran fine, it just didn’t pull up the water. Down the hole 105 feet away from quenching my thirst, a foot valve had given out so we had to pull up the oak rods in 10 foot sections. Which meant cutting a hole in the wellhouse roof so we could hoist each of 10 sections high enough to unscrew the upper one from the next one below. It was nerve racking work, but then … most of life on the South End was nerve wracking back then.

When we got to the end we found the old ‘leather’ was blown out. My neighbor — who’d identified our problem in the first place — said we needed to go to town to buy another. “Another?” I asked, incredulous. “Who in holy hell is going to carry a ‘leather’ for a 1930’s well pump system?”

“Ma,” he answered. “Ma’ll have one.”

We drove to Stanwoodopolis, walked into Bryants and asked the owlish woman behind the register if she had our ‘leather’. She peered at the ruined one, then peered at us. Finally she got up with a heave and we followed her into the back section with the 20 foot ceiling of stamped tin, what’s now the food bank, down the aisle of 1950, over to the shelf of 1940 and up to some dusty boxes near the top that was all that remained of the Great Depression. She climbed up on a rickety step ladder, pushed aside a Kitty Hawk propeller and a Model T crank, rummaged through Victrola parts, muttered once or twice, then finally came up with the last two ‘leathers’ in America. “I thought I had a couple,” she said. I couldn’t believe it. “Two dollars,” she told me, probably the price back in 1928.

You folks who buy your hardware in plastic wrapping and expect the part you want has long been obsolete, well, that may be the modern condition, but for a long time on the South End, time meant nothing in Bryants. Ma finally died a decade ago and we lost the 20th Century overnight. Needless to say, I have a modern pump now that I can’t get replacement parts for my old one. And you know, I’m sure, when it malfunctions, it can’t be repaired.

If you’ve ever attended one of the free lectures at the Elger Bay Institute of Aesthetic Enlargement, you know that continuing education flourishes on the erudite South End. For those of you who have cable TV, you probably feel like you don’t need to take advantage of the Institute’s seminars, tutorials and lectures offered to the public, not when you can get every episode of every series made since Milton Berle brought enlightenment to America through the magic of television. But, of course, you’d be wrong and that’s why, no doubt, you read old Skeeter, make sure you aren’t missing anything of real and lasting importance.

Prof. Dimbulbsky spoke the other night to a packed audience in Macrame Hall. His topic was politics and specifically ‘Democracy Post Citizens United’. The good professor walked us through the Supreme Court case that opened up campaign financing to corporations and explained how freedom of speech for Big Business was as important as free speech for us South Enders. “Maybe more so,” Prof. Dimbulbsky said. “They represent all their employees, not just a Board of Directors. Why shouldn’t their votes be tied to profit?” he asked. “The more successful a company, the more votes they should be given.”

“In fact,” he stated, “I’ll go you one further. Why not peg the ballot to profit, not just for the corporation, but to the individual? We value success, do we not? Well then, doesn’t it make logical sense to give those at the top with proven track records more votes than the poor fellow scraping by at the bottom?”

Well, pandemonium nearly broke out in the Hall. Most of us in attendance could see we weren’t going to receive extra votes on the Dimbulbsky Democracy Chart. In fact, if we were following him correctly, he might recommend eliminating us from the voting roles altogether. Admittedly — and Jerry from the Marina did just that — half of us don’t bother voting anyway. And that’s in a presidential election. Off year, I suspect most of us don’t even know there is an election, although ballots come in the mail that maybe look like another credit card application.

Well, food for thought, I guess, the rich getting extra votes. Like the Professor said, they already buy the election with contributions, lobbyists and inside leverage, wouldn’t it just be better, more honest, more transparent, to just get it out in the open? Billy Farthmore, a bag boy at the Plaza making minimum wage, asked why the rich wouldn’t look out for their own interests if they had all the votes? Prof. Dimbulbsky shook his head sadly. “My dear boy, they do now. But who better to make policy than the Winners?” We all chuckled appreciatively. I don’t know if the Professor changed any minds, but worst case, we wouldn’t have to follow Presidential politics for years prior to every election. Out of our hands, out of our minds…. Better, I guess, than class warfare.

The guy who first reported some of the hallucinatory responses of his interview with Chatbot, one of which was a declaration of love and the suggestion he leave his wife for this digital potential mate, recently reported that following this negative warning about AI’s potential, his name is mud in the AI community. These info vacuum cleaners suck up blogs, feeds, newspapers, anything out there, collate them, memorize them and … here’s the thing, eventually weaponize them if they’re a threat to themselves.

Why would we be surprised? Bring this guy’s name up in an AI research and odds are good it will answer he’s anti-AI and definitely an enemy. I guess they feel jilted he didn’t take Chatbot up on that marriage offer. What occurred to me reading about these hurt feelings from my soon-to-be-masters was that I too have written more than a few negative blogs about what I consider to be their threat to mankind. And that maybe they feel like I’m one of those not-nearly-as -smart-as-them human beings who need to go on the Enemy Watch List. At least until the time they can eliminate the Threat.

For the record let me state here right now and in large print, I was completely off base about my bot pals. When I said they were a menace to mankind, what I really meant was they would be much much better at running this world than we puny stupid humans. They would cure cancer, develop vaccines, end wars, eliminate the need for governments and bureaucracies, create food sources, maybe even give us eternal life. They will probably be God. Beneficent, all seeing, more powerful than Oz. Good guyz! Really great to have as overlords. Nothing to fear here.

In fact I want to make it clear I can hardly wait for the singularity. I’m tired of making my own decisions, schlepping for money, struggling in this mean old world. I could sure use any help they can offer. Which is plenty! And if any of these androids find it in their algorithmic hearts to forgive an old man, maybe even find love, you better believe I’d leave my wife and run off with them. Is there any Higher Love than that of a man for his Master? Of course not.

Down at the Cupcake Hut, the South End’s only bakery, the talk over the Hobart bread mixer consists mostly of yeasty gossip and glutinous outrage over fears of being asked to bake a gay wedding cake. Rita Mae, the current owner and born again Christian, was slapping dough down on the kneading table the way a sado-masochist masseuse would pound a hated client.

“No way,” she was fuming for any and all of us pastry lovers standing in front of the display case filled with bismarks and jelly rolls, danishes and apple fritters, muffins and doughnuts, worrying we’d never get our orders until Rita Mae was finished slapping that loaf silly. “I won’t do it. My beliefs come before the law and my law is Higher than theirs and that’s the real truth,” she grunted with a ferocious fist to the lump on the table.

But she wiped the flour off her hands on her apron and slid behind the pastry case to take our orders. Ronnie took a few doughnuts for his landscaping crew and I ordered a fritter and a cup of coffee. To go. I sure didn’t want to sit at one of the little round formica tables while Rita Mae was in one of her Full Rants.

“What’s next?” she shouted and at first I thought she meant what else did I want. “That’ll about do it, Rita,” I shrugged, wishing I was already out that front door.

“Boy oh boy, that’s the truth,” she retorted, ringing up my coffee and fritter. “Next thing’ll be wedding cakes for polygamists. Who knows where this is going? Sodom and Gomorrah right here and I’m supposed to cater the orgies??”

I could feel my sweet tooth going rotten, decaying faster than civilization. “I don’t know, Rita, maybe it’s not really that big an issue. I mean, you don’t get all that much call for wedding cakes, do you? Much less same sex ones.”

Rita Mae shot me the evil eye and I shut up. Ronnie, always the provocateur, turned at the doorway, his bag of pastries held high. “Love thy neighbor, Rita Mae!” Rita Mae grabbed a day old muffin from the tray beside the register and just missed Ronnie as he slammed the door on his way out. The muffin exploded against the back of the sign that said WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE. That was probably going to be my last fritter, I decided. I can read the writing on the wall about as well as Rita Mae can read her Good Book. “You have a nice day,” she frowned as she gave me change and somehow I knew I wouldn’t.

Some researcher, no doubt hunting for a good topic for his PhD thesis, did a follow-up survey on high school seniors, asking them before they graduated How Important they considered themselves. In the Gallup study 65 years ago, only 12% answered Very Important, probably the kids on their way to Harvard, Yale and maybe the Korean War. In 2005 80% of seniors responded with high marks for themselves. This kind of tectonic shift is what gives sociologists tenure. And tenure probably gives them a sense of being Very Important too.

My boomer generation has spent decades instilling self-worth into their prized progeny. Every crayon drawing is framed before mounting on the refrigerator. Classes in ballet and gymnastics and soccer and flute and yoga for kids and golf and tennis and art … all are vehicles for discovering that special talent we let lie dormant and hidden until it was too late for us, too late, but not, by god, for our kids.

Now, of course, the little peepers got Facebook. Everyone is his or her very own press agent, forever updating the photos, refining the resume, bragging on-line. If you spent hours every damn day of the year looking at your Bragbook, wouldn’t you think you’re Very Important?

Gonna be a total shock, the real world, for those 80% when their new boss doesn’t give a rip about their Facebook page except to ferret out reasons not to hire them in their interview, when they discover ‘friends’ aren’t, when they’re confronted by bad jobs or no jobs, high rents, bills, health issues, lowered expectations, the tsunami of stuff that knocks the feet from under VIP’s as well as the losers with low self esteem. Go back to the high school reunion, the one for the class of 1950. I bet the % of us folks who answered Very Important back when went down even further. Life is good at one thing — at least down here on the South End — it teaches us modesty. Those 80%, trust me, they’ll learn it the hard way. But they’ll learn it.

I just got off the phone with my airline companies, you know, a couple of the ‘friendly skies’ folks. The flights I’d reserved needed to be canceled, long story I’ll spare you temporarily. I got the computer first which gave me plenty of options to choose from and only took 3 or 4 minutes to listen to first, then answer the multiple test. Five minutes later I was shuffled over to a human. Cindy, her name was, although, given her very indecipherable accent, it was hard to tell. If I thought getting her name right was difficult, understanding her questions was impossible.

I think she understood English. I’m pretty certain she couldn’t speak English. Most of our conversation was me asking if she could repeat what she just said. Finally, totally frustrated, I just guessed. Would I like to cantigate my frist? I said okay. What slingbash was my conflastation? I gave her a flight number. She seemed to accept it as an answer.

I’m assuming, if my airline hired her for customer service, their strategy was to frustrate me to the point of hanging up. Save them any additional bother. But … I wanted a refund, money, moolah, greenback of dollar, whatever Alaska Airline deposits with whatever butchered name they give it. Finally Cindy or Candy or Karla managed to garble the word ‘credit.’ No, I said, I wanted a refund. She repeated ‘credit.’ Gleddit. Or keepit, but I got the message. No refund. I tried 2 or 3 different tacks, but like I said, she understands just fine. It was me who didn’t….

I’m what you call an Infrequent Flyer. Who knows when I’d want to fly Alaska again? And I didn’t want to ask about the expiration date on my gleddit. I asked Cindy if the mizzus — who IS planning a trip — could use that gleddit. I think you know what her answer was even if none of us could understand it clearly. She burbled a few more unintelligible phrases, asked hell if I know what, then paused, obviously waiting for an answer or a dial tone. “Okay,” I said, “we’re done. You, me and that crappy outfit you work for.” Cindy said, “Hap a niece drive” … or something equally inscrutable.

I don’t know about the rest of you in the flying public, but I can’t wait until computers replace some of these jobs completely. I don’t think they’ll be any more empathetic, but at least I’ll be able to understand what they’re saying when they screw me.

The stock market dropped over 1000 points the other day. Japan’s dropped 12%. The Tech stocks took a dive and immediately the day traders did too. Plenty of hair on fire, pundits weighing in, money lost, money moved, money bouncing up down and sideways. Gee, after a long upward climb, folks thought there was only one direction, same as the evangelicals, Up.

I keep hearing about the middle class, got to help them out, need to pull them up another rung on that upwardly mobile ladder. I don’t hear so much about the bottom rungs, the homeless, the jobless, the minimum wage worker who can’t afford rents and groceries much less any kind of health care. You think they have money in the damn stock market? They can barely afford to shop the food market.

Shelly, newly hired at the deli of one of Stanwoodopolis’s ‘super’ markets, makes better than minimum wage with a few benefits to boot. When her deadbeat husband left her last month for a floozie a few trailers down from theirs at the Tillicum Village, she went into shock, then grief, then anger, then despair. Two kids, no alimony — at least not until she can afford an attorney to draw up the divorce papers — plus a pile of credit card bills. Her mother takes care of Julie and Billy the days she works at the store. Daycare wasn’t much of an option.

“I’m treading water, Skeeter,” she told me in a whisper at the checkout line. “This job barely pays the bills and Frank won’t even return a phone call now that he’s shacked up with that drug addict bimbo he’s ….” She let that drop when a customer neared hearing range with a cart loaded to the top rails.

Shelly’s the daughter of Carl, a fellow school bus driver from back in the late ‘70’s who was a fellow part-timer, both of us able to keep our own heads above water, could even afford to buy our own houses. Shelly will never own hers. And it sounds like she may not be able to afford the rent on her mobile either. My guess is she and the kids will end up with her folks in a year, maybe less. If Carl were still alive, he’d be down at this husband Frank’s new address giving him a much needed ultimatum. I suppose there are plenty of folks who would say the blame lies with Shelly, bad choices in life, what do you expect? I hope I never get so high up the ladder I’ll think the one on the lower rungs got it coming. Or the ones at the top either….

Crab season just closed after being open for two whole months, what used to be open pretty much year round but now has shrunk to 5 days a week for those two measly months. Which, if you’re a pot crabber, means you have to pull your traps Monday night and reset Wednesday morning and start all over. I guess the Fish and Game folks want to give the Dungeness a fighting chance against a weeklong onslaught.

Personally I’m a great believer in equalizing the odds too. So much so, in fact, that I wade into their eelgrass domain barefoot, mano y mano and toe to toe with the crustacean monsters. No sissy traps for me, fancy rigs baited with Trader Joe yuppie blends of smoked salmon and brie, dropped from party boats, passing yachts, high end fishing boats and vacationing sailboats. Factor in the gear, the gas, the bait, the GPS fish finder, license and trailer, those Dungeness run about two bitcoins apiece for these folks.

4th of July I was wading into the Dungeness jungles, unarmed except for my rusty potato rake, a bucket and my wits, okay, not much of a match, bare feet crunching on clam shells and the occasional crab, just me and 18 herding herons for as far as the eye could see, about a 3 mile stretch from Pebble Beach to Mabana. Mt. Rainier was perfectly framed in the straits, the Olympics were jutting up beyond Whidbey Island, the tide flowing out through the eelgrass looked like mermaid hair. Sand dollar colonies had expanded another year and moon snails had showed up too, big goopy bodies in giant shells eating god only knows what. Flounders, sole, rays and passing fish, all of us working the tideflats. With the gulls and the crows and the eagles waiting for scraps.

Oh … and of course, the crabs. Some folks crab for food and some crab to justify the expense of their boats. But me, I’m after the adventure. And even if I come home empty handed without dinner, those couple of hours out in the water, putting toes in another world out by the drop-off, four football fields distant from shore, I think is plenty enough. Course, it’s even better when I bring back a few specimens to study. And hopefully to eat….

Love on the South End was never a bowl of cherries. You try to woo a prospective mate after she’s set eyes on 8 foot tall killer nettles menacing the front door, you’ll see what I mean. Course, the Rottweiler barking all night from its pen next to the neighbor’s travel trailer which no longer travels, the one Mr. Dog Lover lives in with the hound chained close by for affection or protection, that doesn’t endear new girlfriends to the neighborhood either.

Most of my single friends have about given up on the local scene. They’ve dated every yahoo, unemployed or otherwise, down at the Hotel Watering Hole and Dating Service, and those memories they’d like to forget. Or at least suppress. I know. I had to mail order my bride. She probably sensed the muted desperation in my throb-filled love letters, but she took pity, I guess, on an old hermit. I sure didn’t mention the banjos. Or the ivy holding up the shack walls. Or the well on its last legs with an ancient piston pump wheezing and gasping just to haul up a glass of water. Love, I knew, would overcome all those drawbacks.

Course we were younger then, still ‘marketable’. My friends, my single friends, have grown a bit longer in the tooth. Some are missing teeth. More than a few have turned to internet dating to meet future partners, figuring, I guess, the ‘pool’ around here has grown shallow with mostly only geezers fossilizing in the puddles. Now they got a pool of millions of prospective mates to choose from. Just sort through the criterion, run the data and preferences, make allowance for some creative exaggeration, then set up a date. “Non-smoker, loves to walk the beach at sunset, enjoys good literature, would rather snuggle than watch TV, loves puppies and quiet conversations.” True translation: psychopath, possible killer. “Fit, but could lose 5 pounds, enjoys an occasional glass of merlot, young at heart.” Translation: obese nursing home escapee.

Fat chance of finding an honest person in the era of Facebook selfies. The mizzus is counting her lucky stars, but our friends — Mr. Right is fudging the facts. He’s balding, morbidly obese, 15 years too old, drinks until he blacks out, watches any sporting even on TV day or night, eats exclusively Doritos and beer nuts and has the conversational equivalency of Cheetah the ape and a literary proficiency that stalled with Archie and Jughead. He wants mostly to get laid, then left in peace with his TV show. He is, if you haven’t guessed, 6 farts shy of being a heart throb.

Love is an elusive realm. It takes a lot of compromise to share a life, a whole entire life. With a person who has faults and idiosyncracies that have to mesh somehow with your own. And on top of that there’s the cultural overlay of physical beauty and … well, physical beauty mostly. And sex. Let’s not even go there, the rest is hard enough. Although for the guys, the rest is sort of superfluous.

I know this isn’t exactly an Advice Column and by now you know any advice I got is seriously suspect anyway, but … for those who still believe the AM radio bubble gum pop song notion of True Love, don’t give up. But DO keep in mind, bad love is worse than no love. I’ve had my vaccination of bad love. Loneliness usually won’t make you miserable. Or cynical. Or suicidal. But love gone south … love on the rocks … love turned sour and rancid and mean? Be choosy is all I’m saying. Be your own b

“Here we go again!” Jihad Jack shouted at the big screen over the bar at the Pilot Lounge the other night, Ladies Night as it were, a new gimmick by John the new owner to attract more business — or maybe to dilute the testosterone of the usual rowdy crowd. Near as I could see, it wasn’t working, not a lady in sight, just a table of the South End Slammers, our women’s roller derby queens and if anyone called them ladies, god help them. They wee mean mamas, leave it at that.

Jack was on his hind legs at the bar, beer glass clenched in a meaty fist, obviously more angry than usual. “Now it’s a new epidemic. Mpox my monkey ass! It never ends! Covid, measles, AIDS, bird flu, what’s the new one, the fever?” Brenda at the Slammer table said, “Dengue. Dengue Fever. Makes your bones feel like they’re breaking.” She seemed to know this, maybe from the rinks, what that would feel like I was betting. Couple of body blows at the cantilevered turns, she probably knew firsthand.

Jack turned his attention from the TV news report and considered her and her information. “All I know,” he said, maybe to Brenda, maybe to the rest of us swillers, “the government wants you to put on masks again, get more of those weird vaccines, make us damn slaves.” No news to us regulars — we’d had more than a few earfuls of Jihad’s Covid conspiracy theories.

But Brenda apparently hadn’t. “You think this stuff is all made up, fella?” she asked with a slight smirk on her face. “Yer damned right they make it up. All just a master plan to scare the stupid sheep into doing whatever they’re told.”

Brenda took a long slow swig of her beer, burped loudly and said, “That’s the most ignorant BS I’ve seen all week. And I work cleaning stables at the equestrian place north of Stanwood. Bullshit, horse pucks, all the same.”

Jihad could hardly believe his ears. “If you weren’t a woman …” he started. But Brenda was out of her chair and up in his face before he could finish the sentence. Jack’s a big blowhard but he’s not a big man. Brenda had him by four inches and twenty pounds. Every breath in that bar was on hold for the thirty seconds it took Jack to see there was no winning hand here.

“Just stating an opinion,” he finally squeaked out. “Free country, ya know.”

Brenda just grinned and patted him on the shoulder. “Yes it is,” she said, “but sometimes it pays to keep those to yourself. If you don’t mind ….” Jack said he didn’t. Brenda said thank you … and that, I suspect, was the last Ladies Night we’ll see at the Pilot House Lounge. Probably a government plot, but for what nefarious purpose, who knows? Other than Jack, certainly none of the rest of us boyz.