The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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….

I’ve heard it said that Camano Island is the fourth largest island in America. The continental America anyway. We’re on the biggest island in all of America this week, Hawaii. 13,800 foot volcano – above sea level – taller than Everest if you count the distance to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, the entire island black cinder spewed from the lava still forming the island. The volcanoes divide the island in half, one side dry, the other side with the rainiest city in the United States, Hilo. Right now we’re in Hilo. And yeah, it rains a bit.

If you think of Hawaii as a lush, tropical jungle of a place, you’d be right. But only half the time. Most of it so far is fairly barren, lava fields without much vegetation, volcanic mountains sides devoid of trees, long stretches of semi-arid countryside. Maybe what you’d expect from the top of a huge mountain building up from the ocean.

The Big Island, Hawaii, is the largest island in the chain, but the sense you have here is these islands are small outposts on the planet far far from anything else, pinpoints on a map smack dab in the middle of the Pacific. If you were the type who wanted to escape, this might look like a likely candidate.

Maybe I’ve lived too long on an island with an easy escape route, but living here with volcanoes still active nearby or right underneath, maybe it’s a little too primal, still unformed, altogether too close to the crater’s edge for my comfort level. Sort of like living in Pompeii far out in the Aegean Sea with nothing else close by. Pele looks like an angry god, not a kindly one, breathing all the time right down my neck.

The End of the Road Tavern isn’t actually where the road ends, but it’s close. A few Forest Service roads branch into the mountains and there are a few cabins up Rainbow Creek, but otherwise most traffic stops at the tavern. Donny Butler owns it, bartends, cooks and breaks up fights. He closes Monday and on Christmas, but otherwise Donny is always open. No one around UpCreek recalls him taking a vacation and if he’s ever been sick, it was on a Monday. His cabin is in the woods behind the bar, but none of us regulars have ever set foot inside. Most of us can’t imagine him in such a domestic setting and the others think the house is just his storage area.

You want to know what’s happening around UpCreek, the End of the Road is where you can find out. Who’s poaching what and where, who’s catching cutthroat and what size, whose wife is cheating with who and whose kid is going to prison for what crime. Two years ago Donny got a license to sell hard stuff, figuring to double his profits like a lot of the taverns downriver. Which he did. A lot of profit in a bottle of Jack, not so much in a keg of beer. Donny noticed even the women started coming around, ordered cocktails he had to learn how to make and these were very profitable, plus the ladies brought a fresh clientele and a new atmosphere. He put some checkered tablecloths on the stained tables, tidied up a bit and added salads to the menu. The End of the Road seemed like the Start of Something.

This hunting season a couple of Seattleites celebrated two buck kills a little too exuberantly. “Double Shots!!” they shouted deep into the night until Trapper Jim, also deep into his cups, took umbrage at the out-of-towners’ good luck and his own lack thereof. Later Donny admitted at the trial, he should have quit serving all three. Hindsight doesn’t need a high magnification scope. Jim was untying a 6 point from the hunters’ Range Rover roof when they stumbled into the parking lot. Words were exchanged, push came to shove and Jim pulled his 30-30 Winchester off his Chevy pickup’s rack and shot one of the men.

Who lived … fortunately. But that’s why the End of the Road no longer serves booze and why women drink downstream. Or quietly at home.

What I love about a Google search is the way they put the ads at the top of the ‘finds’. They already got a place heading for SHOPPING, but just in case you might’ve missed a hot deal, they’ll park some at the top of the list. Course, they’ll add some more throughout the search results too. Don’t ask me why, but I find this really annoying.

But then again, welcome to Capitalist America. Television has ads to interrupt shows, newspapers have ads, magazines too, highways have billboards, athletes wear endorsements, the internet tracks our every click and offers you a related product. Thanks guyz! Corporations buy elections, corporations are considered citizens by the Supreme Court, corporations run the world. They advertise, they lobby, they own your ass, period.

Now we got Facebook, Instagram, every social media platform, all monetized, all ethical considerations cast aside, well, what’s new? What? You want state sponsored search engines, commercial free? I wonder, do Russia or China have ads on Tik Tok or Google. Are they selling vacation trips to the Black Sea or Outer Mongolia? Black market movies?

It won’t be long and we’ll tattoo NIKE on our foreheads for a monthly stipend. Already you can find folks who ‘wrap’ their cars in logos of various companies for a price. I’ve even heard of corporations wanting to put stratospheric billboards in space. There just doesn’t seem to be anywhere you can go not to be assaulted by advertisements 24/7 your entire life cradle to grave. Although … last time I whistled past a cemetery the plots didn’t carry ads or logos. Rest in Peace … finally!

Imagine yourself thousands of miles from the next terra firma, on a small dot of land, warm breezes, almost a paradise. With active volcanoes towering above you from every point on the island. Welcome to Hawaii, the Big Island. Everywhere you go is evidence of the last eruptions, nothing but lava fields, some old, some new, some still venting sulfurous emissions, cars and houses incinerated, Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

Up above you the crater glows hellish orange after dark. Drive the highways and you’ll see mostly uninhabited lava beds. We’ve seen a couple of coffee tree groves and nut farms but not much agriculture. For that matter, outside tourism, not much business. I’m told 72% of the island’s employment works in government, schools, administration, fire, police, etc. I’m also told unemployment is rampant.

On top of that add the smoldering grievances of the native population, their land co-opted, their culture subverted, now relegated to essentially a service industry work force. Some of the high schools have a 30% graduation rate. Who needs an education when there aren’t many jobs that require one?

I know, I know, it’s just a vacation — I’m not searching for a place to live. But … I will say, the weather is perfect.

We’re camped in what most Americans would call the Life of Riley, a timeshare apartment in Kona, Hawaii. Swimming pools, movie stars, fancy eating table, clubhouse, golf courses galore, gated entries, high end shopping mall, spas — no need whatsoever to leave the elite compound of Hiltons and Marriots unless you’re crazy enough to venture out among the natives.

Sure, it’s wonderful to rub shoulders and elbows with the retired 1% and let the small army of service slaves trim the hibiscus, skim the pools, change the linens and attend to us and our three other friends’ every whim and need. After all, don’t we deserve pampering? We did, you know it, work those jobs that paid, oh, slightly more than menial labor. Hard jobs, stressful jobs. And do not give me that WOKE talk of white privilege!! You can’t guilt us anymore, especially not here in the land of the pampered few. Everybody had the same chance, says it right in the Constitution … or maybe the Declaration of Independence. What? You think Tom Jefferson or George Washington should’ve freed their help? C’mon, it’s a complicated world.

Right now we have housekeeping bringing in fresh towels and new sheets. Lap of Luxury, buddy. No way am I using my towel more than once or twice. Or a sheet that I slept in. Bring me a freshly laundered one. Is that too damn much to expect? The American Dream in a nutshell. Call me crazy but I’m bored out of my frigging mind. Should have learned to golf, I guess….

You might think the Hawaiian Islands would be like Galapagos, isolated as they are thousands of miles from any shore, another Darwinian study in evolutionary flora and fauna. But no, humans brought in their tropical fruit trees and favorite plants, altering the landscape by design but mostly by accident.
Feral goats roam the lava beds and wild donkeys menace the highways. Rats came in with the sailing ships and with no predators flourished nicely. Slugs with a disease transmitted by those same rats can infect humans with a brain-eating virus or bacteria or some damn thing that can lead to death. Our friends here in Hilo won’t eat anything that hits the ground ripe or not. Paradise comes with a caveat.

I spotted a wild turkey yesterday and a small flock of escaped parakeets today. Feral cats roam the ground here looking for tourist handouts. Most unexpected of all was the mongoose that humped across the lawn and into the rough next to the golf course, a species introduced to control the rat population. Course, mongoose are daytime hunters while rats rule the night. Now they got both. We humans don’t make very efficient gods when it comes to landscaping the Garden of Eden, big surprise. Can’t wait to see what ‘solutions’ we dream up for climate change, probably a global catastrophe of our own making worse than leaving the problem alone.

Nevertheless, I have to admit the mongoose is a surprise species to a tourist like myself. And so far as I can tell, the cobra population is zero. Mark one up for us humans.

One of the pathologies of my generation, the Boomers, is the penchant for dystopian expectation. If one of us laments the oncoming global warming inaction, another will pipe up with what worries her most is the potential of Artificial Intelligence singularity, which, not to be outdone, another will suggest genetic manipulation could lead to the end of the human era. After that it’s a potpourri of End of the World scenarios. Nano-technology, robot warfare, fast forming ice ages, pandemics, nuclear annihilation, Tik Tok viral cat videos, just about everything short of alien invasion. And sometimes even that, extraterrestrial angst.

I guess we’re nervous nellies. That, or we watch too many cheesy sci-fi movies we must think are documentaries. In full disclosure, I’m one of those who are pessimistic about the future. Advances in science don’t seem like the solution anymore — in fact, they seem like the problem, no offense to Elon and the Silicon Crew.
Sure, maybe we’ll merge happily with the cyborgs, cure cancer, invent workable cold fusion, ready rockets to intercept incoming asteroids, halt nuclear proliferation and find a cure for the common cold before it’s too late for us homo sapiens. Science, a powerful tool — even if half of us no longer believe in it.

I try to tell myself be happy, you’re an old coot, probably won’t see the volcano blow or the earthquake that drops Camano into the Sound, be glad you don’t have kids to worry about their bleak future. I know, kind of a selfish attitude, just enjoy what ya got, turn off Fox News and smell the genetically altered roses. Leave the cleanup for the androids. With any luck they’ll program themselves for optimism. Even happiness….

I’m just coming up to speed with the WOKE offensive, the front line of the bitter Culture Wars now, evidently. The Ukraine war has stalled for the foreseeable future, no more classified documents have been found lately in the underwear drawers of past and present presidents lately, so obviously the Tucker Carlsons of the world need new ammo in their endless battle to keep America safe from homos and trans, immigrants and latinx.

M&M’s! Those dancing multi-colored dipped in chocolate cartoon figures with no clothes except for footwear ranging from tennis shoes to cowboy boots. But now, the Mars Company, those WOKE SOB’s have altered some of the shoes. For those like Tucker who analyze every nuance for cultural contamination the way the Taliban check for hidden musical instruments among their minions, the change from high heels on one M&M to sneakers obviously meant those who oppose sexy M&M’s may have won the day, but, BUT, not the war if the Tuckers and the religious fanatics have their way.

Compassionate conservatism — if it ever existed in anyone’s mind but the Bush Dynasty — is dead. The GOP is fighting Disneyland, Hollywood, all the evil forces of Satanic Liberalism that threaten the Old Confederacy, the Southern heroes, the slave owners, racists, sexists, xenophobic yahoos who think Eisenhower was the last enlightened President and Leave it to Beaver was a documentary and the zenith of American values.

Someone needs to explain to Tucker’s listeners that M&M’s are not political, they’re candy. But women and blacks, trans and gays, they’re people. You don’t like it, Afghanistan is the place for you.

I don’t know how it works for you, but Time goes faster when I’m busy.  Put a STOP/SLOW sign in my hand on a road crew and an 8 hour day will seem like 8 days.  Proof that time is relative, just like Albert claimed.  Take the couple of years we’ve had with Covid lockdowns.  Mostly stayed home, maybe drove in for supplies once a week, basically in a two (or three?) year quarantine.

But looking back those years seem easily double.  And other than the pandemic itself, life slogged along without trips, without parties, without concerts, without … well, just about everything.  The days all seemed remarkably indistinguishable.  And then the weeks and months and eventually the years, nothing to serve as a Marker.  Oh right, that was the year we flew to Venice or yeah, that was our son’s big wedding in Portland … or, remember, that was the year we moved to Denver.

No, none of that happened.  Nothing happened!  We quarantined behind surgical masks and waited for the virus to wear itself out.  Except it didn’t!  It mutated.  But we stayed the same.  And so did the days and the weeks and on through another year.  Or was it two?

Maybe Rip Van Winkle had lived through his own plague.  He didn’t fall asleep — time just stood still.  Sure, he thought he’d slept through a couple of decades and yeah, things were different.  Just like Covid.  There’s a war in Ukraine and an election went by with a new President now.

And yet … and yet … we weren’t really asleep, just living in suspended animation, waiting, always waiting to be awakened, the clocks ticking again, normality restored, time measurable finally.  This is Year 3 of the Plague.  I think.  My hair is a couple years longer and my beard is noticeably whiter.  I’m hoping to reset the clocks.  Soon.  Groundhog’s Day has to be over by now.  Doesn’t it?