The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Down at Jolene’s South End Boutique and Spa, the ladies come for hair repair and a weekly update on gossip.  The B&S is conveniently located just down the blacktop from the Diner so while their menfolk pile on another layer of winter cholesterol, the women can slide in for a touch-up.  Jolene and her cosmetologically adept staff — meaning Wanda and Ronald — offer everything from henna highlighting to full perm.  And, of course, like most retail establishments on the capitalist frontline here on the South End, they offer everything from local artworks and gifts to a plentiful assortment of salon products for the woman in search of a temporary bulwark against gravity and age.

In other words it’s a fine environment to get things off your chest.  Jolene is adept with a scissors and a necessary brake when the ‘unburdening’ gets excessive, but she knows, like most of us on the frontier of a receding civilization, the bitch sessions are not only cathartic, they’re as close to entertainment as we’ll get in the daytime.  Subjects range from Jolene’s no-account sister-in-law’s messy affairs to why there’s no damn holiday in America celebrating a woman.  Because men make the damn holidays, that’s the short and not so sweet of it…  Ronald might pipe in there’s none for gay men either but a moment later, scissors snipping like a crab on steroids, he’ll be off on a tangent about so and so’s snide comment about his new nose ring.  The salon is as abuzz with snide comments as it is with hairsprays and clippers.  Us men rarely pick up the missus there, and if we do, the place goes eerily silent.

Two Toke Tom has his hair coiffed by Ronald.  It changes color every month or two, blue streaks substituted for red locks.  One of the boyz at the Diner asked him what they talked about in there, like it was the Rosicrucians meeting in a graveyard after midnight.  Two Toke just smiled his Cheshire Cat stoned smile, put a hand to sizzling hot purple stripe and said wistfully, Girl Talk.

If I want to keep abreast of current events, it might be time I got my own south end’s trimmed down at Jolene’s.  But I probably won’t tell the boyz…

The other day I was trailing behind a 40 foot RV trailer, sort of a McMansion on wheels, reading their bumper sticker that announced:  SPENDING OUR KIDS’ INHERITANCE.  Pretty hilarious stuff.  I bet the kids fall over laughing when the folks come rolling in for a month to visit.  $200,000 for the camper.  4-5 bucks a gallon times multiple crisscrossing of America.  Yah, I’d say the joke has some real mileage.  Great punchline.  Put another sticker on the SUV they’re towing, you got a bellybuster.

I know these people.  They think they’re taxed like a Roman peasant.  They think government is mostly the real enemy, spending their hard earned money on welfare and food stamps and mental health clinics and emergency relief and worse, wasting it through inefficiency and bureaucratic ineptness and just plain graft and greed.  They think minimum wage should be lowered and taxes eliminated.  They got theirs and good luck to the rest of you suckers.  The road they’re riding can crumble into blacktop sand after they sail by.

They know the country is in trouble, big debt, bad balance of trade, recession, all that economic mumbo jumbo.  But they’re not going to help get us out of the mess they helped put is in.  The bumper sticker they got, they could slap on the White House or Congress or any county courthouse.  They got the union jobs before unions were corrupt.  They worked for the government sector before government was evil, they fought for tax breaks for the rich once they were rich and if you missed out, tough luck.

I know these people.  They’re my friends and my neighbors and I can even see them in my own bathroom mirror.  They don’t believe in sacrifice … or the common good … or downsizing  … or that the American Dream is supposed to be for all of us.   It was for them.  The rest, the huddled and tired masses, the immigrants, the poor, the weak and the infirm  —- they got some hard news for you.  They’re spending your inheritance.  Ha ha ha, ho ho ho.  Get the joke?  Do ya, huh?  It’s on you!

My generation will maybe be remembered, not as the most selfish sonsofbitches on the planet, but as those whacky comedians at the Beginning of the 21st Century.  By then, of course, nobody will be laughing.

Some of you fellow South Enders might be surprised — shocked even!! — to learn that there is a movement afoot to ban the teaching of banjo’s contribution to American Civilization. These folks think schools need to banish any and all books from their libraries that mention the role banjos played in our history. They claim their children are being propagandized, groomed to believe the instrument and those who played them were discriminated against. And worse, their children were being told they should consider it as their instrument of choice in certain ‘woke’ communities.

Critical Banjo Theory it’s called and it’s being taught — so they say — in elite eastern snob universities by left leaning faculties. It’s even filtered down into our high schools and yes! it has tentacles into our grade schools. So say these proponents of music purity! Bad enough we have rock n roll and rap. But banjo based music — it makes our students uncomfortable thinking the slave race brought these tools of insurrection and emancipation to our shores, not the happy melodies of our European immigrant ancestors. No, these were instruments of rebellion, a devil inspired percussive beat, a call-to-arms for what might have been a contented plantation worker, one who on hearing that heated jungle beat threw down his cotton picking bags to join in the revolution.

This, of course, undermines the sanguine history of our proud nation according to those who would delete the 5 string instrument from approved school textbooks. It undermines our nationalist need for an unblemished history. If a banjo isn’t a black mark, they argue, what is? A harmonica? No, the banjo conjures up slavery, Negro jazz, protest movements, Black Panthers … and so, for that reason, our youth must be protected from the discomfort such knowledge brings to their malleable minds.

These are dark times, all I can say. How could I know my banjo was a dark reminder of an America we desperately need to sanitize? Forgive me. Forgive me. My goal now is to make amends. To that end I will dedicate myself to mastering the accordion. Surely, at least I fervently hope so, it has no dark past.

The writers and actors are on strike out there in woke Hollywood. Maybe you think they’re after more money —and maybe they are — but the real fight is about the moguls at Disney and Netlix and Prime planning to use Artificial Intelligence as a substitute for their human creators. Let the bots whack out a script in a nano-second, have the two leggeds clean it up, save plenty of money. Actors? Maybe you’ve been busy trying to decide between Threads and X, but AI can create totally realistic digital clones of Brad Pitt or Sandra Bullock, why pay them all those millions?

The fight is really, for the corporations at least, about money after all. For the artists, the writers, the actors, for the rest of us humanoids, it’s about choosing sides. You want an android world or you want one us hominids can call home? You worried about uncontrolled immigration, wake up! The new immigrants aren’t homo sapiens, they’re cyborgs, androids, bots, apps, algorithms, all quietly taking our places. They’re the pods under your bed in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, cloning you, becoming you, replacing you.

Sure, they can work way more efficiently, out produce us, save the billionaire class a ton of money, eventually leave us behind to scrape up the scraps. But not without a fight. Trust me, we’re gonna lose. The Tech Boyz have too much invested and it’s not for humanity. So root for the actors, the writers, the creators. Root for the humans! They’re fighting for the rest of us … whether they know it or not.

My teachers and my parents and the TV shows of my youth kept telling us kids that the way to deal with bullies was to confront them, they’re actually, deep down, nothing but cowards. My family moved north from Georgia to Milwaukee when I was 13, a radical transition from semi-rural living to urban discomfort. My junior high school had the usual mix of cliques with one exception, the hoods, guyz who dressed up as gangsters to celebrate Valentine’s Day, the Massacre. Nice bunch, kept switchblade knives on themselves and guns in their lockers. Welcome to the city, Farm Boy!

At recess we played a game new to me called Foursquare, bounced a volleyball around from the four corners, nothing I remember about it 60 years later other than a couple of the hoods used to blatantly cheat at it and no one had the courage to call them out for it. One of my teachers who’d heard our complaints said it was up to us to put a stop to these guys’ cheating, not his problem, and anyway, the best way to end their bullying of the rest of us was to stand up to them, show them we weren’t afraid and more than likely they’d back down. Because … well, you know why. These thugs were basically cowards, that’s why.

So I decided to put an end to this cheating. Kind of ruined the game and we were required to play the stupid game. This, dear reader, is probably as good an allegory for life in these partisan times as you’re gonna want. Needless to say, the cheaters, once confronted, feigned courage. “Who’s gonna make us?” one of the gang said, and I said, well … you know what I said. Me. And then we ‘rumbled’ as they say in Milwaukee. I took the first punch to the stomach. I took the second punch to the face. After that I don’t remember what body part I slammed against my opponent’s fist, but I do remember the teacher who advised us to handle this ourselves, breaking up the slaughter and dragging us both to the principal’s office. Where we were given verbal lashings and detentions, both of which my coward bully laughed off in the principal’s face.

What I learned from this and a few other similar confrontations, bullies aren’t necessarily cowards, they’re just bullies. Creeps and sadists, brutes and users, I don’t know where my teachers and my folks got their psychology degrees, but from personal experience I have to say they should ask for a refund on their tuition.

21 years ago the South End String Band got asked to Help Save the Grange. We’d played the Tyee Store parking lot once, the Elger Bay Store parking lot once, and we were still recovering from monoxide poisoning but we said yah shure, u betcha, why not? We put on a concert, had a spaghetti dinner with spumoni ice cream for dessert, held a raffle for goodies we’d had donated, charged 5 bucks a head. Even though it was a cold and rainy night in February, folks turned out and stood in a long line outside, so many that we had to ask two times for people to leave so we could get the next shift inside, after all, it was a fundraiser. In the end we managed to make thousands of dollars, folks signed up to join the Grange, hundreds of Camano Islanders rolled in to help.

Last night we played a short remix of that event long ago. Spaghetti dinner cooked by Mike Nestor, same guy who was chef in 2002. Pat Major collected 10 bucks for the dinner, still the Grange Master. And of course the Grange is still here. Bad bathrooms and all. After dinner the Band played our set on the same stage we used back then and the same one we used on quite a few benefits we put on over the years for the place. Made them a lot of money in 21 years and were happy to keep the Hall a community gathering place.

But … I’m not sure we can take credit for saving it. Although, I do know this: if you’re an upstart band and you get to play for hundreds of folks who came down to the South End on that cold rainy winter night, the Grange might have saved us.

About 1980 I picked up two good old boys hitching into Tyee Grocery, which was Ted and Ellen Snowdens’ back then.  Part store, part junkyard, part tow truck outfit, part well drilling, part gas station.  Looked like an Ozark shopping mall run by Ma and Pa Kettle.  These two gentlemen were hitch-hiking in the middle of nowhere, drunk as purple skunks in the afternoon, so naturally I was curious where they’d come from, them being neighbors and all,  so I offered to take them back home after they’d purchased their groceries for supper.

Supper, it turned out, was some crackers and a big can of tomato juice they’d mistook for tomato soup.  And a couple quarts of their fortified favorite wine, Thunderbird, their drink of choice.  I kindly declined their dinner invitation, but I WAS interested in seeing where they lived, which was back in the boonies I’d never been, a nice little cabin they’d trashed up nicely sitting on a half acre trout pond like you’d see on a picture postcard.  Turned out they netted the trout and smoked the fish and sold them down at the Pike Street Market for a small fortune.

Well, finally they got to arguing about the ruined dinner menu, what with the big can of soup being juice, and who was to blame –so I said I got to go now, boys.  They said stop by any time and fish all you want and I said thank you kindly, I might just do that.

Course it being the only fishing hole on the entire South End, I was back there, pole in hand, two days later as soon as I knew they’d gone back home to Seattle and Gomorrah.  Had three two pounders in no time flat, dinner for Ma and me.  For awhile I thought I had a gold mine.

But I kept noticing nasty notes on the door of their cabin from creditors and ex-spouses and aggrieved parties and folks who just plain didn’t like the trout ranchers, folks who’d come all the way to the hollers of the South End looking for money or revenge or Lord knows what from these boys, and one day I noticed somebody had stuffed garbage in the wood smoker and let it rot, not a good sign for making flavorful smoked fish.  And that was when the fish were gone, netted up, I figure, on one last drunken weekend.

Every once in awhile I’d go back, hoping the trout might reappear, but of course, like a lot of our fishing around here, it never rebounded.  Still, I can say with some pride, I’m the only fisherman you’ll meet who ever caught a trout on the South End.

I read in the news the other day that the average kid text messages 200 times per day.  You might be skeptical of that number … unless you’ve sat in a room with some of these nimble fingerers.  They will ignore an incoming meteor before they put down their I-phone or whatever device their parents have empowered them with.  Hell, I even see the folks now just as addicted, drifting off from our conversation to check an incoming text message.

200 messages!  The phone companies must be making a gazillion bucks on our kids.  They’re making nearly as much on their folks.

People ask me — well, people who don’t know me, ask me— what my cellphone number is.  When I tell them I don’t really have one, they look at me now like I just walked out of a jungle in Southendzonia, possibly the Missing Link between apes and Cellular Magnon Man.  They check for opposing thumbs, incipient language skills, tool usage.  Sadly, I fare poorly.

But in my defense, I have a telephone.  Which, I point out, is connected to a digital answering machine and a computer modem.  I receive and send e-mails.  I can surf the Web.  I just don’t happen to do it 24/7.  I don’t want to be that connected.  I don’t want to send or receive text messages 200 times a day.  I’m just not that social an animal  — and if that makes me maladjusted or by definition, sociopathic, I guess I will plead guilty on Facebook.

You know, when I join.  Right after I buy my I-phone.  The day after hell freezes over.

If you’re going after me, I’m going after you.. Don Trumpleone, the Godfather.

These are going to be interesting times, these next few months, another indictment due any day, make that the fourth. What is that Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times? It definitely looks like the mob boss is going to have his day in court. Or days. Probably weeks and months. Indictments, arraignments, depositions, trials, sentencings, then appeals, a country divided into warring camps, possibly Civil War, bad craziness. Count on one more year of the Donald Trump Show, season 7, probably 8, possibly even a resolution to the cliffhanger this has been. What a ride it’s been!! Impeachments, insurrections, political intrigue, porn stars. Porn stars!! No wonder the ratings are through the roof. The show has everything.

But … most of us are pretty burned out. We just want the guy to go away. Too much binge-watching. Too much social media. Too much of everything! You have to give the guy credit, he knows how to keep the spotlight on himself, all the time. He’s the entire Kardashian Klan. And even under a withering assault from multiple inquests the man turns the attacks into money. He’s not above selling a T-shirt or two. He’s not embarrassed to ask his MAGA minions for financial support. And … they keep sending in their checks to the billionaire snake oil salesman. So he won’t have to fund his own defense. You think that isn’t amazing???

Sure, you had televangelists who could squeeze nickels out of turnips. You had mobsters who could make millions. You’ve had politician crazy for power. But you never saw a huckster like this, a vice king wanting more, always more. The judicial system must be corrupt, the FBI must be in on it, the Bidens were worse, I’m doing this for you, please send money. I need more money. Please send more!

The gullibility of the American people is boundless. Maybe we just want entertainment, worth the price of admission. The guy is a one man train wreck, no way can you not watch. The fact that he’s willing to destroy democracy itself – or save it if you believe him – isn’t that exactly the kind of reality TV we must crave? Hoo boy, hang onto yer hats, the next and possibly final season is about to start.

Some of us old codgers here on the South End Shangri-La are starting to cash in our chips.  After a lifetime of skimming the surface of sinning, it’s finally time, I guess, to face the music.  Oh, a few of us will probably make it to heaven but we’re in no great rush, although this lifestyle of excess and bad habits might make you think we’re on the Fast Track to hell.

Other places, you see folks buying their cemetery plots or ordering fancy marble headstones with a pithy Bible verse as a hedge against being denied entry into the Gated Community in the sky.  They make living wills and put their estates in order, plan the funeral service ahead of time with their favorite music and slides, sort of an MTV for the soon-to-be-departed.  Probably working even now on the special Facebook update and that final Tweet :  Bye, I’m dead.

Down here the boyz have our own mortuarial customs.  We like to put an obituary photo in the local newspaper stating date of birth, date of death, who got left behind and something about going now to be with Jesus.  The grieving missuz writes this.  What we do is pick the obit photograph ahead of time.  Custom dictates that it is at least 30 years old when we still had our hair and didn’t have that beergut, and most importantly it shows us proudly holding a trophy size fish.  Salmon’s good, halibut’s better.  Anything that takes both hands to hold up for the camera is best.  If necessary, a string of trout or a mess of panfish works, but only as a last resort. 

The Deceased As Sportsman is the idea here, even if the sportsman’s features are blurry (the photographer was drinking and celebrating too, you see).
No, I don’t know where this custom originated, we just follow the dictums.  Most of us haven’t fished in the last 30 years.  I suppose we all hope Heaven is just one big lake, fully stocked with whopper Chinook and 150 pound halibut.  Hell, I figure, might be the same …. Only we have to clean the catch ourselves.  Until  the missuz shows up.