The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Back in the early ‘70’s I lived on a Polish homestead in Northern Wisconsin, wife, dog, a few hippie friends, sort of an ersatz commune, which, of course, didn’t last long. Not as long as my short-lived marriage but that’s another story. The little mill town we lived near, Mosinee, was pretty much a redneck burg, home to the Posse Comitatus, one of those fun gun clubs advocating anti-government sentiments. Part of the reason I left, but again another story.

This story is about the Herman’s Hermits who came to Mosinee to play some sad sack of a gin joint on its outskirts. You maybe remember these guys, mid ‘60’s, Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter hit, mostly a flash in the pan but hey, big for awhile on the pop charts, part of the British Invasion. A decade later the lads are down to touring backwash America to crowds of dozens, not the thousands they once performed for.

The lead singer whose name I can’t remember, was interviewed on the Wausau station promoting the gig and the D.J. asked him what he thought of playing for really small audiences in the waning years of a once really successful career in a crummy tavern far from the madding crowds of yesteryear.

And Herman, or whatever his name was, said it was great being on top of the charts, drawing huge crowds, being famous … but the real deal was playing their music. Which was what they’d be doing this coming weekend to whoever shows up. We’re bloody musicians, he said, and that’s what we bloody do, play music.

I gotta say, some 50 years later in my own twilight career, I still remember this interview. And I think now what I thought at the time, bloody good on you lads! The money, the fame, the whole music industrial complex — not really the point in the end. Nice to have hits, nice to have a chart topper. But in the end, despite the lights going dim, the band plays on. Course, me, I might miss the groupies….

Harry works down at the O-Zi-Ya Body Shop. He’s an artist with bondo, makes a ‘total’ look brand new after pulling the dents and replacing crushed quarter panels, has a real nice touch with an airless in the spray booth. Back about 4 years ago, Harry was a ‘he’. Six foot four, muscular in a lithe sort of way, moved car parts around like baskets of daisies. I didn’t know him real well, I guess, mostly because my beater cars never got treated to the Body Shop make-over. Dents, scratches, bullet holes —- I’m not spending money for pigs’ lipstick.

So imagine my surprise when Harry walks up my drive during our annual Mother’s Day Studio Tour … in high heels, a tasteful above-the-knee pleated skirt, grey blouse and a matching handbag. “How you doing, man?” I ask nonchalantly and Harry explains, no doubt for the 1000th time, he’s no longer a man. Course, judging by the 5 o’clock shadow of a beard, he’s not quite a woman either. Which, he tells me earnestly, will take the hormone treatments some time to kick in.

Even on the live-and-let-live South End, this was, well , this was … different. And we’re accustomed to different. Harry toured the studio and we chatted it up and when he left I gave him a manly sort of hug and said, “Good luck, man,” and immediately corrected myself. Harry gave me a wink and a laugh and sallied forth down the drive.

Harry quit the Body Shop — not because the boyz couldn’t deal with The Change — they still speak fondly of him. Her. You know what I mean. She wanted a new life to go with the new her.

A couple of years ago I ran into Harry. Harriet now. She was installing fountains. Hauled the rocks, dug the ponds, wired the pumps, plumbed the waterfalls. “I’m an artist, Skeeter” she declared. She was welding sculptural components, creating light shows, running her own business. “Life’s good, then?” I asked.

She broke into a radiant smile, one I never saw at the Body Shop. Leaning down to whisper in my ear, she fairly bubbled, “It’s a joy my boy, it’s a joy!” All I can say is the path to happiness is a whole lot harder for some, even on the salty South End, but it isn’t impossible.

Here’s some good news for you beleaguered gun right advocates: now you can buy your ammo from a vending machine. No need to haul down to your local gun dealer for bullets, just wheel up to the conveniently placed dispenser in your local chain grocery store. Course, at this time the only states where they’re located is Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama but you can rest assure American Rounds, the distributor, will expand exponentially until it reaches your very own Safeway.

Of course if you’re a gun-toting red blooded American, you’re justifiably worried about kids getting their hands on this ammo. Not to worry, the machines require an ID and a facial scan for recognition. If this was a voting machine, you’d rightfully be concerned that it could be tampered with, but for something as inconsequential as purchasing ammunition, not that big a deal. Although I would have thought maybe there would be some concern about that facial recognition scan, something akin to tracking by nano-particles in your Covid vaccines.

The Second Amendment as now defined by our Supreme Court, allows us citizens to keep and bear modified assault rifles with bump stocks that convert them to automatic weapons. Pull the trigger and you can unleash hundreds of bullets a minute. That, my friend, is a lot of ammo. To replenish the armory, you need a convenient place of purchase and what better place than the grocery store where you buy your beer and bread?

All that’s needed now for the new American Militia Man is a vending machine that spits out the gun too. One stop shopping! And not to fear, facial recognition should insure no felons, minors, mentally disturbed or spouses with restraining orders have access to these weapons. If you can’t trust your patriotic vending machine company, who can you trust? The damn government? Lock and load, baby!

Maybe I live too far from Rome. Which, these crazy days of politics gone mad, might be viewed as a blessing from the gods. But unfortunately I’m a news junkie and even worse, I care about the world beyond the South End’s porous borders. As hard as it is to believe, I’m watching the increasingly probable return of Donald J. Trump, convicted felon. A man indicted on so many counts, we’ve all lost count. Impeached but not convicted, twice. We all know who this guy is and yet …

What I cannot comprehend from my perch at the end of an island at the far reaches of the continent is how this election seems to have lost focus on the real issues of our time. Trump is gaining traction with the Hispanic vote. Doesn’t matter, apparently, that he calls the immigrants criminals, insane, rapists, murderers. Trump is polling better with the Black voters. Doesn’t matter that for a decade his dog whistles underly a racism that ought to disqualify him for any black votes other than Clarence Thomas’s. The young voters, all those Gen Whatevers, have begun to swing his way. Doesn’t matter that the greatest threat to them is climate change and if Trump wins, it’s more drill baby drill. Bring back coal, kill the EV automobile, forget about cutting emissions. He’s even gaining with the women, maybe they’re tired of the Me Too Movement and a guy who grabs crotches, rapes women and pays hush money to porn stars isn’t as bad as they thought.

How hard is it to make this case? He blames the deficit on Biden but was the one to cut corporate taxes. And wants to cut them further. He wants to put tariffs back on Chinese imports. How difficult is it to point out the average household will pay even more than what inflation has already cost us? The economy, despite Trump’s dire prediction, isn’t going down the toilet. It’s in better shape than most other countries, employment is growing, wages are up, inflation is down.

I guess our attention spans, shrunk to a few seconds max by Instagram and X, certainly can’t recall when this pre-felon advocated treating Covid with bleach and other quack remedies. Only one million Americans died of that disease but we’ve forgotten by now. Big deal … and the next pandemic he’ll outlaw masks and isolation.

January 6th was far too long back for most of us Inattentives to remember. Mobs hunting our senators and representatives, howling to hang Pelosi and Pence, killing and beating a few capitol police. What the right wing calls a tourist imbroglio, nothing to see there; in fact, given the chance, the instigator will pardon the convicted.

The list of outrages is too long, too depressing, too egregious. But this country, apparently amnesiac, may vote him back in. It takes your breath away. And it will take more than that before his next term ends. Assuming it ever ends.

Billy Jean ran the art gallery down here at the aesthetically swollen South End, the only paid employee. The artists who showed their wares could pay extra commission or work 10 hours a week. Since they rarely sold their art, the extra commission was zip so why should they work? The first year the co-op, the South Fork Art Barn, was closed most days when no one was willing to sit in the vacant Second Hand Shoppe they’d leased. Finally, after mounting rental bills, the South End Arts Council voted to hire a staff person to do what they wouldn’t.

Billy Jean interviewed for the minimum wage, no benefits job and was hired the same day, primarily by dint of NOT being an artist herself, the main criterion the Council set for qualifications. Not having been around artists, B.J., who thought the position would mostly be running the store, tracking sales and receipts, closing up at the end of the day, well, she never dreamed the job actually was Ego Masseuse. The first day Sarah Jenkins came in early to demand her watercolors be moved front and center where they would cheerily greet the customers before they decided to leave empty handed. Billy Jean nodded and smiled, but eventually pled ignorance of the rules by virtue of being the New Hire. She would, she vowed, check with the Council and the Co-op Board. Course, it turned out the Board had their art front and center so a rule was made on-the-spot to keep the current display configuration.

The first week various grumpy artists brought forth their complaints, moved paintings or hung new ones, argued their cases with Billy Jean and wished her luck. Meaning, sell my work! By Friday she felt like a vise had scrunched her ears into one auditory pancake of pain. She was, she told her newly unemployed plumber husband Brent, nothing but a glorified Cat Herder. Brent, still in shock over his sudden layoff, told her she’d get the hang of it, just stick with it, Honey, we need the money, a refrain she later could have embroidered in needlepoint and hung front and center by her own front door and called it art or literature or just a motto for the rest of the South End.

Barely a week has gone by since the Great Debate Debacle, two old geezers in a WWF Smackdown with wet towels. One ranting and ducking, the other just a deer in the headlights, all in all a sad spectacle most of my libtard snowflake friends turned off in less than 15 cringe-worthy minutes. Me, I stuck it out til the end, no doubt hoping Joe’s Red Bull would kick in and he would respond with outrage to some of the lies and evasions of his goofy opponent, but I was more than disappointed, alarmed even that this election looked like a gimme to the goof.

Wildfires are raging across the country in the unprecedented heat waves. Mostly hair on fire among the Democrats wondering what now? What now, indeed. Their candidate, the one who says he was jetlagged after his European D-Day junket, plans to fight on. But … maybe only from 10-4, no more evening interviews, debates or, well, much of anything beyond milk and cookies. So what to do, what to do?

I like Joe, I really do. I loved my Old Man too but when he reached 100, I understood he’d gone past his expiration date a few years earlier. And yeah, I get that Joe surrounds himself with good people, something Donald Trump wouldn’t understand when all he requires is absolute loyalty to Donald Trump. Joe could manage the office another four years with the folks he picks, I have no doubt. But so could plenty of others who are younger, more vibrant and energetic. There comes a time when a wise person should know he needs to step down. Joe has reached that time. His legacy is secure.

But if he pulls a Ruth Bader Ginsburg here and lets that moment pass allowing the country to vote for a vindictive, narcissistic, anti-democratic, probably insane authoritarian who is backed by legions of mewling sycophants, well, Joe, your legacy will be quite different. It’s time to take one for the team. For the country. Take a rest. You deserve it.

was watching an IBM ad the other night. They were touting their genius machine WATSON as an example of how we humans were going to succeed in the future. By out-thinking our competition. WATSON can beat any human in chess. WATSON can whip anybody in Jeopardy. WATSON is as smart as we are and getting smarter every day. We just need to make smarter WATSONS if we want to get anywhere in this brave new world. Down here on the South End we aren’t likely to cobble together an artificial intelligence. Or even much of a natural one, judging by our track record so far.

IBM is creating machine intelligence. WATSON is a machine, built by us, programmed by us, in service to us. In a couple years WATSON will build itself, program itself, improve itself and surpass its original creators in no time flat. The mega corporations and the defense departments of the world think this is the leg up for their profits and their success. WATSON and his brethren will simply out-think their competition. Trouble is, we’ll be the machines’ competition. Well, not much competition, judging by the South End, but hey, even MIT, Stanford, NASA, you name it, they’ll be left in the silicon dust too.

We live in a world of machines now. Already machines run machines. Computers run factories, control the banking, game the stock markets, kill the enemy with their drones. They live in our office, control our entertainment, answer questions on our phone, connect us to other humans who have them too. We’re dependent already even though we think we’re boss. We even got em down here on the South End. Okay, we’re mostly using them for e-mail and Google. But we take them for granted already, just a couple decades since Bill Gates put the pods under everyone’s bed.

You think maybe I’m a Luddite. You think I’m paranoid. You think I don’t trust IBM or Microsoft or Apple to make the future a very comfortable place for me. You think we should just let them be smarter. Out-think the competition! You think maybe this is just another tool, like a hammer or a sewing machine or a spinning jenny, something we use to better our lives.

But I’ll tell you something: a hammer doesn’t get smarter. A hammer doesn’t figure out it could make next-generation hammers that self-feed, that replicates those with built-in mobility, that deduces new uses for nails, that realizes its potential as a weapon and identifies the new enemy. A hammer isn’t going to out-think even South Enders. Okay, maybe a couple of us. WATSON isn’t your friend, all I’m saying … and he won’t be your servant much longer.

So I’m sitting in the South End Clinic filling out paperwork they lost the last and only visit many years ago … when a young guy comes in with what he tells the receptionist is a very bad cut on his hand from work. His hand is wrapped in a dirty handkerchief held in place with duct tape. The receptionist explained they don’t do that kind of emergency — he’d need to drive himself to the next clinic down the road in Stanwoodopolis. About 10 to 15 miles.

But wait … did he have insurance, she asks. He did, but then he was told the clinic about two pints of hemoglobin away wouldn’t accept the insurance he had. Could he drive 15 to 20 miles further?

Healthcare, at least from my seat in the waiting room, seemed hazardous to this guy’s health, if he even makes it the 40 mile drive before blacking out at the wheel. No one asked him how bad the cut was, whether fingers were missing, if a transfusion was necessary. I know it’s not an emergency room, but it is, supposedly, a part of the health care system.

My brother, back in our days together in college, wanted to be a doctor … until the night he did a drunken back flip and hit the radiator in his dorm room with his head. His roommate ran him to the University ER where he sat for a couple of hours with other patients bleeding and vomiting and oozing fluids. By the time he got stitched up he had changed his major from Pre-Med to Don’t Know. Probably good to learn he was squeamish around pain and blood before he interned.

Sitting my turn at the South End Clinic, I know how he felt. Trouble was, I was a patient. On the South End we’ve always relied more on Self-Reliance than health insurance. But sadly, the time comes to all of us when we need outside help. Course, chances are good they’ll tell you to go further on up the road. Keep the gas tank full is what I’d suggest. And carry a tourniquet.

Johnny Fever’s got a cigarillo dangling from his lips, one arm out the window, one hand fiddling with the radio dial. He’s listening for clues in the song lyrics, he’s watching for numerological signs on license plates, he’s motormouthing a mile a minute flying down the interstate at 105 miles per hour, dodging semis as he weaves wildly, lane to lane. “There you go,” he shouts over the windnoise, flicking ash out the open window. “Two threes and a one, adds up to seven! Seven’s my number, man, seven’s my combination!”

I’m tightening my seatbelt, wishing I’d made my will, but it’s too late now and my only hope at survival is probably a state trooper with radar. “Hey, John, how ‘bout we slow down 50 miles an hour or so?” I say, not that I think he hears one word I say over the radio squawk. “Hear that?” he howls, hammering on the dash. “Van Morrison, man. Van the damn Man!”

Apparently this is a Good Sign. He’s smiling, hums to the words, flicks an ash and squirts between two behemoth diesels as if they were stopped, not doing their actual 65mph. They disappear behind us in the blink of a bloodshot eye. I’m white knuckling my armrest, saying between clenched teeth if I live through this I’m going to get my will in order first thing.

Johnny Fever is on a bender. He stopped taking his meds a week ago and now he’s untethered, a rocket moving into the stratosphere of his skull, homing in on Seattle, me as co-pilot. If I thought I might protect him from himself, I was sadly mistaken. I will be the victim of his unintentional suicide, more than likely.

“There!!” he bellows. “Right there!” I look to where his cigarillo is pointed, a truck license that has two sevens, a three and a four. “Triple sevens, man!! Whaddaya think of that?!”

What do I think of that? I think I’m not feeling too lucky today, is what I’m thinking … as we cut suddenly between a delivery truck and a BMW. Johnny Fever slaps the dash and dials the radio for another sign. “Gonna be a good day, Skeeter,” he yells, grinning happily. Where the hell are the State Patrol when you need em?

Saturday night at the End of the Road Tavern, Big Larry was pounding the weathered fir table he and Ed Grabowski, a newly unemployed log skidder, were sharing as they finished up a dinner of Donny’s Hot Wings and a plate of curly fries. Big L. was exercised over the Big City liberal weatherman calling the upcoming storm the result of Global Climate Change. “My global ass!” Larry roared. Ed seemed more inclined to drink away his recent lay-off than encourage environmental debate. As he got up for his 3rd or 5th or whatever bottle of Budweiser, he said to Larry, “Who the hell cares? The weather’s the damn weather. It changes. So what? Hit me again, Donny, willya?”

Donny slipped a hand into the cooler, corralled a Bud and knocked the cap off with a practiced expertise, then slid it two feet down the bar. “I dunno,” he ventured, “they might have a point. Heating up like a greenhouse, gotta change the winds, probably the ocean too.”

Larry wasn’t having any of it. “Aw, what next, Donny? We gonna quit cutting trees? Quit drivin our trucks? We gonna live like Afghans cause we’re afraid the weather’s too hot?”

Trapper Charlie suddenly came conscious at the end of the bar where he was watching college basketball between two teams he’d never heard of. “Ain’t like it’s gonna be all bad. We might become the new California.” Big Larry avowed how he’d rather get sent to Lake View Nursing Home down river than live in a new California with all those wine-sipping yuppie yahoos. Charlie said we’d still be the ones living here and Larry said he’d be damned if he’d live here then!

These are meteorologically interesting times, I guess, and we’ve debated this many a rainy night at the End of the Road. The scientists seem pretty much in agreement and the Hot Talk Radio folks are in total disagreement. I can tell you this — and I know it’s a small sampling poll — we aren’t going to do much else about it but argue, at least up here in UpCreek. It’ll be a cold day in hell before we change our minds or our habits. Donny says to no one in particular, “Maybe I should start stocking up on a higher class of wine. You know, just in case ….”