The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Maybe you were like me when you saw the Trump Tennis Shoes, advertised for $399, probably thought some fake news blurb, make the Donald look like some cheeseball huckster selling merchandise like a snake oil salesman. And same as me you probably did some fact checking, expecting to find that this was some bogus AI blog bot cranking out embarrassing phony B.S., see who was gullible enough to click on the bait. I mean who can tell anymore what’s really true and what isn’t? Another year or two and we can forget about fact checking, we’ll be so completely inundated with Artificial Intelligence images and speech imitators, nothing will be certifiable.

Turns out the tennis shoe pitch was authentic. Shameless promotions, MAGA hats, Trump steaks and perfumes, coffee mugs, why not sneakers? I dunno, doesn’t it seem … well, unseemly? Crass even? You picture Abe Lincoln hawking stovepipe hats with his picture on them? Or George Washington selling axes with I CANNOT TELL A LIE on the handles?

And sure, I know we’re a capitalist country and I get that Trump was elected at least partly because folks thought he was a helluva biznessman. But c’mon, this smacks of nickel and dime commerce. You expect a Kool-Aid stand next at the entrance to Mar-a-Lago. The man needs more money, all I can figure. A few billion isn’t enough! He needs liquid assets. He needs a bond to meet his fines of half a billion bucks. He needs to sell those sneakers!!!

We are a strange country, all I can say. We might re-elect a guy who never conceded the last election, who, in fact, tried to overthrow the government. For a day or two after Jan. 6th the Republicans called for him to resign. But then … well, now they support his campaign to be the President again, a nearly total unified front. They pledge their allegiance to the rapist, the crook, the insurrectionist, the liar and the cheat. They pledge allegiance to the sneaker salesman. Sell em clown shoes, they’ll buy em!

The Supreme Court of Alabama just decided that a fertilized embryo, frozen even, constituted a living human being, meaning that if you killed little Jimmy, you’re liable for murder. The Head Justice declared this was the will of God. Hard to argue against the will of God, that’s for sure. Probably not too long before sperm is considered human life, maybe ban contraceptives that prevent the little wigglies from doing what the Lord Almighty intended them to do.

Kinda hate to admit it in these theocratic times, but back 53 years ago I had a vasectomy. I know, the statute of limitations over the murder of a million potential lives may not apply. And even if it didn’t, Eternal Damnation might still be in store for this boy. All I thought I was doing, mistaken though it might have been, was trying to avoid an unwanted pregnancy. At the time I really didn’t consider myself a serial killer. Alabama might.

Maybe the solution to the ‘immigration problem’ is really more unwanted pregnancies, a boost in the low wage baby force to take those jobs nobody wants now except the immigrants. Get rid of legal abortion, maybe ban all contraceptives, forbid sex ed in our schools, let the Lord’s will be done, hey, we don’t need cheap labor from the south lands, we’ll have plenty right here. Course, the local yokels might not pick our crops, build our houses, landscape our lawns or dig our ditches — not for sub wages.

If it costs a little more, if we need to raise minimum wages, if taxes have to go up, well, I’m okay with that, I’m completely chill. Just don’t put me on trial for first degree murder. Don’ put me and my fellow murderers digging ditches. We’ll get our justice in the next life down in a burning Hell. Where I’m damn sure I’ll be in good company.

I was listening to some talking head today describing the kids entering the Job Market. They wanted to work at home, at their own computer stations, alone. Skip the co-worker interaction, they really haven’t learned social skills. Unless you count Tweeting.

I got friends whose kids never make eye contact, who never look up from their X-Box, who have no need to say hello, who live in a digital suburb of my reality but never find a reason to wander over for a Look-See. The gulf between us is huge and growing rapidly into a cultural chasm.

My folks always believed us kids were better seen, not heard, but they made sure we said hello to guests and answered a few perfunctory questions before we scurried to our rooms or the den. The kids — and especially the grandkids — of my pals, they’re beyond social graces. I suspect the workplace of their future will forego watercooler banter and co-worker etiquette. Might just as well let em work at home in their bedroom and send their reports at the end of the day.

The only problem I have with all this is that us Boomers still have to deal with them. When we’re gone, they can tweet and twitter to their hearts’ content, they can social media long distance, they can avoid face to face human interaction and lock into video games, stream Netflix and update their Facebook. But meanwhile I still have to stand next to cellphone users and my buddies’ kids playing video. When we’re gone, they won’t even notice. But it’s going to be a different world, a lot less personal, way less intimate. I suspect they’ll enjoy the peace and quiet. I’m trying to do the same….

Folks ask me why I write these odd little vignettes of life on the salty South End. I always want to answer something like Because I have to. I have no choice. Us artists love to talk that way. Mr. Picasso, Pablo … why do you paint? To live, my little friend, to live. We never say, So I don’t have to work, you damn fool, what did you think?

We’re an odd society, us Americanos. We tend to exalt the Artiste as somehow unique, special, a rare breed, a person on an exalted plane. Probably the result of mental illness or malignant non-conformity. Prone to alcoholism, drug abuse and extreme hedonism. Who suffers more due to sensitivities more painful than herpes and who dies an early death with only one ear remaining.

We seem to like the notion of Starving Artists. Only through suffering, I guess, can you break the bonds of normality and ascend into true inspiration. Maybe explains why we keep minimum wages low — we’re trying to help folks find their Muse.

Art is a form of insanity, we think. Why else would a grown yahoo live in squalor, risk the hostilities of friends and family and neighbors alike, all for a passion that rarely makes a living and is always an invitation to cruel criticism.

“Let me show you my newest painting. Be honest, what do you think?” Do you folks do that??? Would normal people do that??? And the sad part: artists are the very WORST at rejection. Every review, criticism, rejection and commentary is a verdict on their creation. On them! Imagine the neighbors knocked on your door and gave you a criticism of your kid. “Did a nice job raising Jimmy, pal. Spittin image. Too bad about that shoplifting incident and that pregnant no-account girlfriend of his. Next time maybe get a vasectomy. Just thought you’d like to know. By the way, my daughter, Jennifer, she just got accepted by Harvard Medical School.”

So why do we write … or paint … or put broken glass back together? I could lie to you, I could spin a web, I could wax romantic or philosophic. But the truth is if I didn’t, I’d go crazy out of sheer boredom. I’ll probably go crazy anyway, just not as fast….

Folks often ask why is it us artists don’t start a co-op art gallery down here on the South End the way most places with an overabundance of aesthetics and egos do. Truth is, we have considered it. And more than a few times, rejected the notion. Personally I love the idea of a joint venture with my fellow artisans, but … well, let’s be brutally honest here, we’re mostly a clueless lot fiscally. Whatever side of the brain controls creativity, it’s not the same side as the side that manages finance, money, business or advertising. In fact, I suspect if we ran a CAT scan on most of our brains, that area would be dark, almost as if aliens had stolen it.

Put a few dozen of us together, say, in a meeting to decide how to organize a co-op art gallery, and let me tell you, it’s an anarchist agenda right from the get-go. Maybe we just don’t get much beyond how many of our watercolors the wall space will hold. Forget leasing the building, forget who manages the sales, forget who sits the place open.

Then you got the issue of who can be IN the co-op. Everybody with a brush and an easel? Or do we jury in the members? And how much for dues? And what commission if anything ever sells? And how do you work the payback for sitting the store? And bylaws … oh yeah, gotta have rules and all that arguable rigamarole!

Ten minutes into the organizational meeting and you got total chaos. Artists vs.craftsmen. Volunteers vs. the Big Names. Rule makers vs. bohemians. Capitalists vs. hedonists. Believe me, you need to carry a weapon. Hopefully you won’t need to use it, but it’s best to be prepared. You think art is a spectator sport, you’d be at risk.

So yeah, we’ve flirted with the notion of an Art Co-op. About as likely as a Sunni-Shi-ite dance studio, you ask me. That’s why we pay galleries a 40-50% commission. To save lives, if nothing else — and probably worth every cent.

Right after college I decided to be a bum. Worked awhile at a dog pound, drove city buses, did a stint as manager of a restaurant, then went into a slow retirement. One of my gigs was as an inventory specialist. Roll into a grocery store with my team of fellow specialists, count the cereal boxes and aspirin bottles, pretend it’s accurate, give an accounting to the manager who, half the time, asked us to ‘fudge’ the numbers anyway.

One Friday night we headed to Rockford, Illinois from our home base in Madison, Wisconsin. Chico drove, for which he got a dime a mile extra. Six of us piled into his rat-trap jalopy, no seatbelts, no radio, no working speedometer and by dark we rolled into Rockford. Chico took a sharp left, my passenger door flew open and I was hanging onto it for dear life before the guy next to me hauled me back in. Chico said, “Forgot to mention it, but that door’s broke.”

We finished up our inventory at a small chain grocery, adjusted the number for the manager and piled back in Chico’s Cadillac. About half an hour later an Illinois State Trooper had us pulled over, who knows for what of many possible violations, and Chico got out to deal with the cop while the rest of us sat quietly like Guatemalan immigrants. Chico came back, handed me a yellow ticket and pointed at the glovebox. I put it in with about two or three dozen others. “Chickenshit,” was all he said.

At the last tollbooth about 2 in the morning he pulled up to the toll taker and handed him a buck. The guy in the booth surveyed the six of us long-haired motley losers before handing Chico his change. “You look like smart fellas,” he said with a smirk. “What’s a six letter word for skirt. Ends in G.” He tapped his pencil against his yellowed teeth.

Chico tossed the change in an ashtray with cigarette butts and joint roaches. “Sarong,” he said and put the car in gear. The toll taker looked at his crossword, looked back at Chico and us, the only car that time of night, shook his head in disbelief and said, “Thanks.”

We drove off across the farmlands where everyone but us slept their dreamfilled nights away. I quit the next day, never worked a crossword puzzle or a full time job again my whole life. Chico, who knows…? Probably a CEO now.

I was following a Cadillac SUV with a bumper sticker that read: YOU’RE THE REASON YOU’RE SUFFERING. This is bad news indeed for most of us down here on the South End, but at least now we know who to blame for our misfortunes. Although … I don’t think I care for the Winners in the Game of Life telling us Losers we deserve what we got. Some of us sure do. And I’m one. But I don’t ask for favors … or sympathy … or welfare either. I’m not going to make it to the 1% and I’m not gonna work myself to death trying.

But there are folks like Janet down the road, two kids in preschool and daycare, a husband John back from the Oil Wars with one leg and a head bounced too many times in IED explosions who’s pretty much a permanent casualty. She’s trying to hold a job and hold things together too. She’s 24 going on 60 and I seriously doubt she thinks her suffering is on account of her.

Joe the Plumber — and no, not that Joe the Plumber — has meliosomethingorother, the cancer from breathing asbestos when he unknowingly worked with the stuff in his youth. I doubt he’s going to take kindly to a Cadillac bumper sticker that thinks his Attitude must be to blame for his disease.

The rich think the rest of us are lazy, I guess. The 1% think the losers are takers. The corporate boyz think they made it on their own, no help from the education system, no assistance from the government that built the infrastructure, no subsidies or tax credits or loopholes in the law. They got theirs and if it happens to suck up most of yours, well, tough. You coulda done it too. Course, you might have been born black or Hispanic, you might be autistic or handicapped, you might be a single mom or a laid-off worker, you might get sick, you might be discriminated against, you might have been born on the South End.

We all want to believe we’re the captains of our destiny. But the waters we sail are more treacherous for some. It doesn’t take much compassion to pick up survivors in the water from the lifeboat off your yacht. Course, when the time comes we take the yacht away from you, I hope you’ll understand, it’s going to be your fault.

“A rating of U.S. presidents found Donald Trump was the nation’s worst ever leader while Joe Biden ranks 14th, putting him among the top-third of commanders-in-chief.
The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey asked more than 500 members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association and recently published scholars to rate the 46 presidents in “overall greatness” on a scale of one to 100.
Respondents ranked Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and George Washington, respectively, at the top of the list. Trump finished dead last behind James Buchanan, who preceded Lincoln and governed in the lead-up to the Civil War.”

Here it is, the holiday celebrating Lincoln and Washington’s birthdays, so why not have the experts rate the Commander in Chiefs top to bottom. Top was Lincoln and Washington, kind of makes sense since these are the two Presidents we honor with a holiday. Plus, they’re on Mt. Rushmore. Probably harder to decide who was the worst. Or maybe not. The day before the rankings came out, the guy who raced to the bottom was pitching 400 dollar Trump Sneakers. I know, the Man has to make money to pay back the nearly half a billion in fines he’s accrued so far for tax fraud and for defamation of the woman he raped. Kind of surprised he didn’t roll out a line of women’s underwear, the E. Jean panties with the small handprint in the crotch. Maybe later….

The MAGA folks will back this pitchman for another 4 year term. And half a chance they’ll put him back in office, give him an opportunity to raise his ratings above Hoover and Buchanan’s down there in the cellar. At least there’s no way he can drop any lower. Unless he makes good on that underwear line….

Alaska Bob and I were swapping stories last night, one I told about the bartender in Jeno’s (now Jimmy’s) in Stanwoodopolis calling the cops when she thought we were laughing a little loudly, something hard to do in the best of times in that town, which reminded him of a visit to Pekin, Illinois back about 1980. “I was having a beer in the Holiday Inn lounge,” he reminisced. “Only three guys at a table across the room and me at the bar. They were all agitated about the name of their mascot being changed, getting a little heated.”

Pekin apparently was named for their sister city, supposedly a direct line through the center of the earth to Peking, something another Illinois town believed had similar to its namesake Canton. Probably they had different surveyors but for the point of this story, let’s not worry about the veracity of lines through the earth’s core. The point is that Pekin had adopted for its mascot names, the Chinks. And even as early as 1980, some liberal snowflake pre-Woke yahoos had taken offense at using a racist slur for their teams’ names. The Chinks. Who’d have thought anyone would mind? Down the road the roller skating emporium was called, amusingly enough, the Chink Rink. All in good sport, eh?

The boys across the lounge wanted to know what Bob thought of this ‘mess’, changing the hallowed name of their beloved mascots. And Bob avowed as how it didn’t bother him, might even be a sensible move, times even then being what they were. This, needless to say, provoked the Chink lovers and a brief but long distance argument across the empty lounge ensued, neither backing down until finally the leader of the group who mentioned he was the mayor of Pekin, said he was going to call the police if Bob didn’t shut the hell up. Bob could see the handwriting on the wall, mandarin maybe but translatable, diplomatically stated that he would finish his beer and be on his way, nice talking with y’all.

In 1981 Pekin High School changed its name to the Pekin Dragons. Who knows if the Chink Rink bowed to the liberal crybabies? Not if the mayor had anything to do with it! As for Canton, until 1932 they were the Plowboys then the Little Giants named after an International Harvester tractor. And Peking, China? Your guess is probably better than mine but I’m hoping it was the Rednecks.

I got more than a couple of friends who think the economy — the world economy, no less — is on its way down the toilet. Huge debts, large deficits, the Federal Reserve printing money like it was Charmin — they see a Fiscal Armageddon on the horizon. Depression, unemployment, then the collapse of civilization as we know it. They’re wondering if it’s time to buy a gun. Or an arsenal. They’re wondering if they should buy Chinese currency or a year’s supply of food and water. They’re wondering what to do with their money that will keep them afloat when their neighbors drown.

I remember one of my dad’s pals, Malcolm, building a bomb shelter in his basement. Great guy, Malcolm, salt of the earth, a family man, just taking care of his family down in Northern Georgia near the foothills of the Appalachian where we lived. He took me down into his basement — I was all of 12 years old — to show me the shelter that would keep his family alive after the communists attacked us with nuclear weapons, an event he saw as inevitable.

He had water tanks and shelves full of canned goods. He had gas masks and a propane stove. He had flashlights and a ton of batteries. “Electricity’ll be gone. Maybe forever,” he told me. There were bunk beds and a portable toilet. It looked like Motel 6 had mated with a Goodwill. It really didn’t look like a home for months of subterranean living, unless you were gophers.

In the corner by the door Malcolm had his hunting rifle. “For food?” I asked, thinking maybe a dinner of radioactive deer might be the way to go. Malcolm picked up the gun and gave me a ‘serious’ look. “No, Skeeter,” he said solemnly. “Your dad didn’t plan for what’s coming and … well, when you all try to come to our shelter, I’d have to stop you. There’s only room for us.”

Now, I wasn’t the sharpest kid on the block, but I took his meaning pretty quick. “You mean you’d shoot us, Malcolm?” Malcolm set the rifle back in its spot and nodded. “I have to protect my family first. That’s the way it is.”

It’s real hard to like a man who tells you he’d kill you, whether you’re 12 or 64. The world after a nuclear war, and probably an economic Armageddon too, would be filled with Malcolms. They see the bleakest future and the darkest side of human nature, I suspect because they find it in themselves. Me, I’m not interested in either. But I’m always glad to know who to avoid, catastrophe or no.