The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Techno Tom was morosely stirring half a pint of sugar into his coffee, no doubt figuring the sugar blast would quadruple the jolt from the Diner’s caffeine.  Freddie Fairlane, one table over with the other Flatheads, the vintage car guyz, watched for awhile then moseyed over to sit at Tom’s table.  “You seem a little down in the mouth, amigo,” he said.  “Lose your best friend?”

Techno didn’t even look up, just kept stirring that coffee he was apparently never going to drink, maybe just let it congeal to a cold pudding.  “I didn’t lose my best friend, Fred, but I’m losing my shirt … and maybe my marriage too.”  Freddie grabbed his plate of half eaten heart attack, chicken fried steak, greasy potatoes, side of four eggs and made himself at home beside Tom.  He wolfed down a couple forkfuls, then, mouth crammed with cholesterol, asked him what the hell he was talking about.

“I put most of my retirement funds into bitcoin, that’s what I’m talking about.  Seemed like a sure bet at the time … not so much now.”  Fred swilled his coffee, took another shovel load of breakfast, then asked what was bitcoin.  Techno Tom put his head on the table next to his undrunk coffee cup and made a whimpering noise that attracted attention from most of the Flatheads, men who had known defeat themselves at the hands of rusted bolts and impossible to diagnose electrical problems, defeats they mostly kept locked inside their garages or simply expurgated with howls of rage out of hearing from their fellow enthusiasts.  Misery may love company but most of us aren’t looking for an invitation.

Fred had quit chewing his chicken fried steak.  The spectacle of his seating companion head down on the formica table top made eating, even for Freddie, an unhelpful remedy for whatever problem Tom was unable to cope with.  He looked back at the table of his automotive pals who were all staring at the strange tableau before them, one that even in the notoriously eclectic Diner seemed a bit out of place during a quiet breakfast.  Fred put down his fork and raised an eyebrow to the onlookers before shrugging helplessly.  “Any of you guys know what a bitcoin is?”  Tom, without lifting his head, quietly groaned.

Prior to Trump the Republican Party was about 85% normal conservatives, fiscal devotees, less government types and about 15% John Bircher, radical Tea Party, full blown paranoids and complete whackjobs.  The percentage now is reversed.  Qanon, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, White Nationalists, Freedom Front, the list is long and their legions march in lockstep.  Whatever happened to the middle of the road GOP is something for historians to analyze for decades.  Blame it on Donald, blame it on hot talk radio, blame it on Fox News or blame it on the lady with the alligator shoes, the truth is that Republicans have embraced authoritarianism, conspiracy theories, anti-vaxx, anti-science and moved into their own version of the Dark Ages, superstitious, half crazed and apparently convinced government, technology, big business, all are conspiring to enslave them.  Reason with them?  Not at this point.

Let me offer an illustration from the Georgia Senate race where Herschel Walker is in a statistical tie with current Senator Raphael Warnock.  When queried about climate change, the ex-football star made his position abundantly clear.  “Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air, so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move,” Walker explained. “So it moves over to our good air space. Then now we got to clean that back up.”

This is the current state of the GOP.  No doubt breathing the mixed up air circulating on the troubled currents of Sino-American atmospherics causes this sort of muddy thinking.  Any sentient human older than eight years old would listen to this mumbo jumbo and decide the person espousing this was unfit to hold a job, much less public office, but the good folks of Georgia, half anyway, plan to vote for a man who obviously took too many blows to the head on the gridiron.  At least Herschel has an excuse.

I don’t pretend to understand what has happened to the Grand Old Party.  A virus maybe, bad air, reality TV, onset dementia, lasers from other galaxies, nano-trackers in their bloodstream, who knows?  But obviously whatever the cause, this is viral and spreading faster than monkeypox.  I seriously doubt another mask mandate will prevent its spread.

I got a call today and yeah, I know, who the hell picks up a phone these days, especially when you don’t have caller ID, but okay, I picked up.  Hello? Hello?  I usually wait a few seconds before hanging up, but this time I was expecting a call from the mizzus so I gave it a few seconds longer.  Finally this low volume, sad sack lethargic voice comes on the line, Hi, I’m Sam, do you want to sell your place?  Occasionally I like to stay with these calls, see where they lead, maybe learn some skillsets I can use to market my own stuff.  Sam, I admit, didn’t seem promising for sales techniques.

I said sure, I’m dying to sell the place, what you offering?  Sam, a little delayed in his response, finally asked if I had a price in mind.  Sure do, I said, but I’d rather hear your offer.  Long pause.  Real long pause.  I said, hey Sam, buddy, you still with me here?  You awake or should I call 9-1-1 for that overdose antidote for fentanyl.  Maybe give me your address.  Sam eventually returned to the semi-living, wondered how much I might want to sell my hacienda and land.  How about 2 million dollars, Sammy, how’s that work for you?  You know where I live, what the place looks like, or is this a cold call?

Sam, no last name, just Sam, seemed to be pondering this.  Finally, wearying of the fun, I said, hey, Sam, wake up, you need to up your game a little, show some enthusiasm if you want to scam the unwary, you can’t be drifting off into your own ozone between dialogues.  And here’s another suggestion: lay off the drugs or at least tweak the meds down a bit, you’re scaring us potential clientele.

Whether Sam was with me on the last minute of his sales pitch, who could tell?  All I know is I missed a great opportunity to make two million dollars.  Maybe the next call….

You tell me how a political party that welcomes immigrants, LGBT’s, Moslems, minorities, the disabled, the poor, the blue collar folks, how a Big Tent party like that can lose to folks whose main appeal is racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny and religious intolerance, a party of the corporations and the country club rich.  How the party of Wall Street can manage to stay a viable political force by trotting out wedge issues like abortion or church and state separation or the right to own assault weapons?  C’mon, something stinks in Denmark here and it isn’t the caviar.

I know, I know, it’s called the United STATES, emphasis not on the united but on the states.  The Founding Fathers, those demi-gods of yore, the ones who owned slaves and huge tracts of land, they managed to unite the squabbling states by compromising to give little Rhode Island the same power as New York.  Fair?  Democratic?  Not really, but who said America was fair?  Women couldn’t vote in the United Colonies elections.  And don’t even mention the slaves.  In fact, don’t even teach that stuff anymore.  The Wise Men, the ones who wrote the inviolable Constitution, give Wyoming with its meager population, the same number of Senators as California.  Don’t talk to me about fair.

So now we have a country divided.  Red states mostly rural, mostly western or southern, poor, religious, aggrieved.  And blue states, coastal, wealthy, educated, urban, aggrieved.  Not to generalize too much.  You could almost divide the country by urban vs rural.  Washington, Oregon and California, cross the Cascades or the Sierras you got rural red.  Coastal side, blue urban.  The suburbs, call them purple.  The South, the Confederates, almost all red.  The Yankee states, all blue.  The vast territory in between, the Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska, Idaho, Montana, Utah, call it the Big Empty, huge expanses, not too many people, red red red.

And we have a Congress that rarely compromises.  Democrats vote in a block, Republicans vote in a block.  How the devil do we solve problems if nobody meets the other halfway?  It’s all or nothing, do or die, any bill that needs passing requires 60% and with Congress equally divided, 60% might as well be the moon.  No wonder polls show most of us think the country is on a handbasket ride to hell.

With social media driving the wedges deeper and deeper, how do we find common ground anymore?  How do we hear the other side, their concerns, their fears, maybe even their hopes and dreams?  Maybe the chasm is too wide now, the animosities too deep.  If we’re not united, why not accept it?  Maybe we should rethink the Civil War.  Let the South go.  Re-establish the Confederacy.  Let the states decide which country they’ll join.  It may be time to consider the unimaginable.

Two Toke and I were taking the sun at the picnic tables outside the Pilot Lounge the other day, one of the only warm days of the so-called summer, a fine opportunity to thumb our noses at melanoma and global warming.  There was a warm breeze , the squabbling of seagulls and the gentle lullaby of Port Susan lapping at the dock.  Two beers in, we decided life was good, the world could manage without us and gee, why not order another elixir.

About that time we were joined by a small group of rowdies, evidently fresh off the back 9 up at the Camaloch links, who parked a table away and proceeded to whittle away at our heretofore sunny mood with commentary on the Jan. 6^th congressional hearings, mostly to the effect that they were a scam.  Two Toke and I are old politicos, addicts to the news, veterans of Watergate and more than a bit cynical in our old age.  Me, I try to avoid confrontation of a political sort, figuring, I guess, that debate is a complete waste of time.  T.T., well, let’s just say Tom is a live-and-let live sort of hombre … until his space is violated.  And these golfing yahoos, loud as a megaphone in the hands of the Proud Boys, definitely intruded on his personal boundaries.

“You two locals?”, one of the group asked and his compatriot chimed in, “or just Locos?”  which caused the group to erupt in belligerent laughter.  Before the bile could rise to our throats, another asked what we thought of that bullshit kangaroo court the Democrats were holding on the January 6^th protests.  “You’ve heard of them, right?”

“Gentlemen,” I said, “we’re just doing our part to keep the economy of the island humming, having a quiet beer, not really looking for a debate with you Proud Boys.”

“Who you calling a Proud …?” one of the militia asked but Two Toke interrupted him with a firm, “You. We’re calling you one, you hard of hearing?”  Holy insurrection, I thought, Tom’s looking for a skirmish if not an outright assault here at the Pilot Lounge, one look in his direction and I could see things were going to go south asap.  One of the golfers was up out of his deck chair and another was gripping his Budweiser like a potential club.

“Gentlemen,” I practically shouted, “let’s not ruin a perfectly good day with a political debate.  My friend here is a bit volatile on the subject and I’m sure you meant no disrespect calling us locos, just a friendly icebreaker but a serious faux pas, nevertheless.  Why don’t we all settle down, make a little toast to the gods of summer and drink our drinks in peace?”

Well, the South End is not known for its barroom brawls.  Arguments, sure, disagreements, you bet, but fistfights, not so much.  Two Toke is a Viet Nam Vet, no stranger to sudden violence, I knew, but I had never seen this side of him.  It was like seeing a Zen Buddhist priest swerve into a white knuckled rampage over some perceived slight, maybe taking umbrage over someone clapping with one hand while he was meditating.  The golf boys must have noticed, even slightly inebriated, that things had gone from clubhouse jeers to full blown Danger.  The locals, obviously, might actually be loco.

Reluctantly they removed themselves back to the safety of the Lounge’s interior, tossing a few snide obscenities as they retreated.  “Well, that was ….” I said, not quite coming up with the what it was part.  T.T. shrugged.  “I fought in Nam, not my fight, not my war, just a drafted guy too young to know better, but dammit, I won’t have morons in my face who think the country I fought for is a joke.  Kangaroo my ass.  You still want that beer,” he muttered, “I’ll buy.”  When he got up and started for the bar, I motioned for him to sit back down.  “I’ll buy, not you, maybe save a life or two.  You already served your duty, guess it’s my turn.”

Will Rogers famously said back in the days when democracy was still in vogue: “I belong to no organized party; I am a Democrat.”

For some reason unclear to me, I got invited to emcee the Island Democratic fundraiser. Nobody asked me what my political affiliations were, maybe just assumed I wasn’t a card carrying Proud Boy or an Antifa member.  Coulda been a closet Maggot, pledging allegiance to the President in Exile.  Maybe they didn’t care, just a Big Tent for any of us fed up with the past few years of the Titanic starting to go down.  The S.S. America is taking on water now, listing to the right and looking for an iceberg chunking off in the fake climate change conspiracy.

Maybe some of us were hoping the highest court in the land would help to right this ship.  Well, they righted it all right.  Got rid of Roe v Wade after promising to abide by precedent, gave gun owners the freedom to carry concealed weapons about anywhere except maybe their own courtroom, finished off the separation of church and state, at least for Christian churches, not sure if other religions will fare so well, gutted the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases.  The black robed high priests finished off more than that.  They finished off their own credibility as neutral arbiters.  They claim to be Constitutionalists, meaning if the Founding Fathers didn’t mention it in the original text, there’s no basis for new interpretations.  You know, a couple centuries later.  Kind of hard to figure what they might have meant in regard to, oh, digital privacy, automatic weapons, birth control, cloning, artificial intelligence, global warming, all that new fangled stuff they didn’t quite anticipate back in the 1700’s.  No point trying to adjudicate anything that didn’t exist back then, I guess, just assume the Founders were clairvoyant.

When McConnell refused to consider Merrick Garland for Supreme Court Justice, saying it was too close to an election to let a sitting president nominate anyone, the Democrats howled, but … and this is typical … they rolled over for it.  They could have shut down Congress, they could have pushed the nomination over objections, they could have made a damn federal case of this completely bogus attempt by McConnell and his minions to subvert the Constitutional right of Obama to nominate the next Justice.  Steve Bannon once said that Democrats think these disputes are solved by a pillow fight.  Republicans bring a knife or a gun.

I don’t plan to go to the fundraiser with a knife or a gun.  But … I think it’s time for Democrats to fight back with more than a pillow.

Suppose for a minute or three that our President-in-Exile had managed to let those tourists with weapons through the metal detectors at the January 6^th ‘rally’ and suppose the Secret Service had obeyed his instructions to take him to the Capitol to lead his troops to the halls of Congress to stop the certification of Joe Biden to replace him.  Seems okay, right?  Like he said, those folks with assault rifles, Glock pistols and body armor weren’t there to hurt him.  Not sure who they were planning to hurt, but not him.  Let his people through!

And imagine that Mr. T had reached the Capitol to be with his people, maybe even picked up a flagstaff and helped break through the barricades and windows, might even have used a few wrestling tricks from the days of World Wrestling Smackdowns and taken out a few of those pesky Capitol police.  Good video.  Might turn it into some reality TV programming.  Ads, residuals, spinoffs, if nothing else, great viewing late night between presidential tweets.  Dramatic shots of the President leading his troops up the stairs, backing up those guards, demanding to be allowed into the room where the electoral votes would be certified.  “Hell, no,” you can hear him shouting, “not on my watch!”  Half the hall might erupt into cheers, half the others protesting demurely.

And suppose, somewhere down the corridors leading to Mike Pence’s offices, the Proud Boys —don’t you love the name! — find the Vice President exiting his office for a more secure location.  Hang him, the crowd cries, hang him high!  Hopefully somewhere there’s a security camera or two, capturing the melee of curious tourists overwhelming the Secret Service, capturing the glee of those same tourists hurrying Mike out to the gallows outside where the noose had been erected and maybe even the last words of the soon-to-be-disgraced second in command before being hoisted up, the rope placed around his neck and then the kicking legs, the gargling in his throat, the screams from his family who had followed the mob outside.

Imagine this had actually happened.  Imagine they had hanged Mike Pence with television cameras eagerly documenting the event, transmitting the lynching to millions of viewers witnessing the assault on the Capitol.  Is it hard?  Is it imaginable?  And if the President, now self-declared as winner of the 2020 election, had stepped outside to marvel at the sight of a swinging Mike Pence dangling above his happy MAGA followers, gave an impromptu acceptance speech and in passing mentioned that Mike had gotten exactly what was coming to him, would the country, would the red hat folks and the ‘tourists’, would the Oath Keepers and the Stop the Steal believers, would they have cheered?

Who thinks we need to make America great again?  We’ve already done it….

Some of us layabouts at the Poker Parlor were trying to think up something special for an upcoming 4^th of July celebration.  We figured we got so many Vets down this way the Diner might as well declare itself a VFW South End Auxilliary.  And since most of them are vintage car guyz too, they could hold their own annual Independence Day Parade from Camano Head to the Elger Bay Store.  I, of course, wanted to just use these militiamen as an excuse to secede from the Island, but cooler heads prevailed.  As usual.

Two Toke Tom served in Viet Nam and now is pretty much anti- every war.  Jimmy Z, who’s old enough to be Tom’s old man, fought the Japanese in WW2.  Tom thinks Jimmy’s still fighting em and maybe so, but I notice Jimmy driving a Toyota pickup now even though he swore for 60 years he’d never buy a ‘Jap Car’.  Baghdad Bill fought in the second Iraq War and Big Larry just got back two years ago from Afghanistan.  Jerry spent a year in Korea and frostbit a couple of fingers he wishes he had back, but he still can play a mean guitar.  We even got Crazy Eddie who ‘liberated’ Grenada.  We’re missing Somalia and Panama and Bosnia, but with all the newcomers rolling in, we may cover those too eventually.

Sometimes the boyz argue among themselves about those wars and sacrifice and what patriotism really means at the Friday night poker game we’ve been running since 1986 down at the Marina and Bait Shop.  Two dollar limit on bets, no limit on alcohol.  The pots don’t do much damage, but single nettle Daddle Distillery moonshine sometimes does.  I sit in with these war-hardened patriots most Fridays and serve as their patsy and their sometime referee, the one who never served even in peacetime.  Or what Two Toke calls a draft dodging, student deferred, flag burning, Summer of Love hippie protester.  He takes great joy in telling me I would’ve loved the smell of napalm in the morning over there on the Delta.  Jimmy Z chimes in how his platoon could’ve won Viet Nam single-handed although Jimmy never once has told us one iota the hell that must have been Iwo Jima.  But he’s the one who puts a liver spotted hand on Bill’s arm whenever Bill gets overwhelmed by memories of buddies lost in the HumVee he was driving when it was blown off the road to the airport in Baghdad.

We’ve fought too many wars, I think, before realizing I’ve said it out loud.  I see by their pinched lips and averted eyes I won’t get an argument tonight.  Patriotism comes in all uniforms, even no uniform at all.  Big Larry finally breaks the swelling silence, pushes a handful of quarters into the pot and says, real quiet, “I’m willing to spend a couple bucks, Skeeter, to see if you got more than bluff in this hand.”  Grateful to change the subject, I say, “Name of the game, Big.  Read em and weep.”

Capitalism succeeds because it combines two primary drives in the human brain: greed and the urge NOT to work for someone else.  On the South End most of us tried our hands at employment but came up a little short.  Short of a work ethic, short of money, short of tolerance for a Boss.  So we did what most desperate, unemployed people do.  We started our own business.

Any good STARTING YOUR OWN CORPORATION FOR THE COMPLETE IDIOT book will tell you under-capitalization is the main harbinger of Failure in 90% of startups.  Obviously none of us down here bought the book, probably couldn’t afford it.  “It takes money to make money.”  Page 2, Chapter 1.  Folks just figure, I guess, they’ll buy a couple of yaks, breed em, then sell the little yaksters to a clamoring public.  They don’t really factor in the yak feed, the vet bills, the yak barn and the yak fences.  And they NEVER factor in the publicity campaign to create a viral fever for WANTING  or NEEDING a yak.  Maybe many yaks.

The other thing they don’t calculate in is how much work self-employment entails.  Without overtime.  Without benefits.  You’re supposed to trade off working for Cap’n. Bligh in return for slaving 80 hours a week for Mr. Wonderful, yourself.  Course Mr. Wonderful isn’t issuing paychecks at the beginning.  He has yak bills to pay before he pays himself and the debts are growing deeper than yak droppings out in the barnyard.

So it’s little wonder us entrepreneur types, us Job Creators, us Captains of Industry, end up broke, disillusioned and depressed, our dreams shattered, our shacks mortgaged, our divorce rates sky high.

But!  By god, we’re South Enders and South Enders don’t quit!  Well, okay, we gave up on our capitalist fantasies of entrepreneurial riches.  But we stayed true to our vow never to work for the Man again, never to be a cog in the well-greased machinery of some #@*&!!^# company, no sir!  If we have to live poor, so be it.  If we have to live by our wits, even if that’s a SERIOUS disadvantage, okay.  And if anyone out there is looking for a very nice herd of cute yaks, I think we can help you with YOUR dream.

You live in a remote backwash like we do, you might think life is passing you by.  But even for those of us sitting still, the world keeps spinning.  Live long enough and you’ll have a book or two of stories, I guarantee you.  Even Little Billy.

Little Billy lives in the While-a-While trailer park that Ralph Wissmach set up back in the ‘70’s, not really zoned for it, but that was back when the South End was a little wilder and regulations were flaunted with impunity if not relish.  Ralph owned most of the single wides, hauled them in as rentals, then leased them PLUS added power and water surcharges.  If Ralph hadn’t acquired a ferocious taste for blended whiskies, he might have done okay, but he drank most of his rent money and neglected upkeep in the park.  By the turn of the century the While-a-While was a ghetto, tenants made payments only occasionally and the sheriff steered clear if possible.

Little Billy’s castle was the trailer at the end, leaning partly into the woods, curtains always drawn.  The adjoining trailer was vacant, curtains fluttering tattered out its broken window, allowing Billy even more privacy.  Cats by the dozen came in and out at Billy’s through a pet door he had cut into the fiberglass back door of his abode.  His neighbors saw more of the feline herd roaming the park than they did of Billy.

The Trouble began when the Carter brothers rolled in one windswept monsoonal day late in November, off-loaded their rust-eaten 4×4 trucks, then, over the next week, were joined by their kin and girlfriends until the trailer was wild with metal rock and constant fighting.  Strange cars and grungy people came night and day.  Billy kept an imperious silence through the next couple of months.  Except for the cats the Carter clan would’ve suspected his place abandoned.

Then, one drizzly night after New Years, the Carters decided to amuse themselves by shooting at Billy’s cats with a couple of .22’s.  By the time Billy stepped out on his rickety porch step, three of his felines were dead or bleeding next to the trailer.  Billy stood stock still, just a silhouette in the backlit doorway, and watched silently as Joel Carter, drunk on Jack Daniels, stoned on grass and cranked on meth, lifted his rifle to his lips and pretended to blow the smoke away.  Before he laughed and went back inside.

What went through Joel Carter’s empty head when Billy came knocking, nobody will ever know.  “Wuzzup, asshole?” he muttered to Little Billy who was standing on the porch with a .38 in one hand and a bleeding cat in the other.  When he saw the pistol, he smirked.  “What now, Wyatt?   We gonna shoot it out at the OK??”

Billy, apparently not much for light banter, put a slug in Carter’s kneecap, eliciting a howl that could be heard out to the highway.  He watched the backrooms of the trailer erupt into activity, the entire tribe now gathered and shrieking like deranged Banshees.  Billy held his gun up for silence and got it immediately.  Then he shot a writhing Joel Carter in the other leg, brought the weapon to his lips and in an ironic gesture lost on the assembled trailer trash, blew smoke off the end of the barrel.

In the novel that won’t be written, Billy might have driven off into the night, never to be heard from again.  But this being real life and not Hollywood, the sheriffs arrived 15 minutes later and took Billy away.  He gave no resistance and the only words anyone heard him speak were when they shoved his head down before he was put in the back seat of the cruiser.  “Someone needs to care for those cats.”