The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

When I was about butt high to a bumblebee, we lived in Mississippi. Then we moved to the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina to live in a ranger station back in the Pisgah National Forest. Some years later we headed further south and moved to the hill country of North Georgia. I lived in the Deep South from the time I was three until I was thirteen. You never lived there yourself, you can’t really imagine what the South is. It’s different, is what it is.

My best friend in 6th grade invited me to come along with him to his grandparents’ for a day on the farm and a Sunday dinner with the family. I said sure and we all rode in Tom’s dad’s station wagon into the red clay country south of where we lived. Once we arrived Tom and I headed into the pasture to explore the countryside, getting admonitions from his folks to be back in an hour for supper, supper being lunch. All I remember of that walk was being chased by the biggest meanest bull I’d ever seen. Tom said Run! and boy we sure did. I’ve never thought of cattle as benign ever since.

So later at the dinner table, after grace, we told the assembled family how we narrowly escaped death by Brahma as we hunkered down to eat okra and cornbread and ham and pickled beets and so many vegetables from the garden it looked like a pantry from the Garden of Eden. I may have noticed the grandfather glaring at me, kind of a contemptuous stare, but I tried not to, just ate my food and complemented Tom’s grandmother and thanked them all for inviting me for lunch. Supper, I mean. Somewhere about the first round of dessert he pointed a fork over my direction and asked, “Boy, where you from?”

“Dad, don’t start up now,” Mr. Vandiver, Tom’s pop cautioned. The old man said he was just askin the boy a question, and he turned his gaze on me again. I felt my apple pie turning to cement in my mouth. “I’m from Gainesville,” I said and he shook his head no. “You come from up north with that Yankee accent,” he corrected me. “Yessir, I do. I lived in Mississippi, North Carolina, California, Michigan and I was born in Maine.”

“A Yankee,” he muttered, “in my house. Never thought I’d live so long to see the day …”

That supper table got real quiet real fast. Tom’s father was shaking his head sadly but he wasn’t about to add much to the conversation, not at his own father’s house. Later on the long ride home he told me he was sorry it turned out this way, but Gen. Sherman had marched through those hills 100 years ago burning and pillaging and some folks had long memories. His father was one.

You think maybe another fifty years later, folks down there might have forgotten the War. But you would be wrong. They don’t fly the Confederate flag because they forgot the damn war. Some of it might be racism, plenty of it is resentment the North fought them and won, even more is that they think a way of life, a cultural heritage was stolen from them that left them poor. I have no doubt there are more than a few places still where no Yankee has crossed the front door in a century and a half. And just like the bulls, I give them a wide berth too.

Now that Covid is squarely in the rear view mirror for most of us (maybe for half it’s always been there) we can turn our sequestered attentions to more important matters than mask mandates and booster vaccinations, only a million of us died these past couple of years, time to move on. And no, I’m not talking about commie teachers propagandizing that racism still exists or gays should have equal rights anymore or if Roe v Wade is going to be relegated to a Supreme Court waste basket. I’m talking about Ukraine, that country most of us couldn’t find on a map that Vlad Putin has been attempting to redraw for a decade now.

Oh, I know a sizeable percentage of us couldn’t identify the United States on a world map, but let’s not go all tangential on our educational system, we’ll have plenty of time for that in the midterm elections. Ukraine, stick with me here. You remember Chernobyl, maybe saw the Netflix series, well, it’s in Ukraine. Or maybe you vaguely remember the last impeachment trial, all about quid pro quos, military aid in exchange for finding dirt on Biden’s kid? No? Well, once again, that was Ukraine, the place where Vlad had already annexed Crimea, said Khruschev had gifted them that country when he maybe was drunk on vodka but now he wanted it back. Khruschev, remember? Okay, never mind, it was a long time ago. Back when Russia was part of the Soviet Union. Yeah, they’re different.

We had a Cold War, see, Iron Curtain. Ring any bells? When the Soviet Union collapsed, all those countries Russia had snapped up after World War Two — and I know you’ve heard of World War Two, the Good War? — well, Russian let them go. Too much work maybe, too many languages, too much trouble. But Putin thinks this was the biggest mistake in history and apparently he would like to return Russia to its glory days, you know, before the country became a kleptocracy and a poster child for corruption. They were communists back then, like the Fox News folks think teachers are now here in Amerika, but once again, let’s leave that for later. And we hated communists. We hated Russia. Bad, very bad. Us, good, very good. Those were simpler days, my friends.

Now things are complicated. Our President-in-Exile thinks Putin is good. A genius, in fact. And the right wing media echoes that sentiment. I don’t know, maybe they think we should annex Canada, smart move, genius move in fact. Mexico? Well, we got all the drugs we need without the cartels in our downtowns. But … I was talking about Ukraine, wasn’t I? I can see this is possibly too byzantine. And anyway, what’s it got to do with us?

Living at the bottom of some right wing wishing well, the patriots, the true patriots, are sounding the bugle for military intervention, this time not for taking over the Capitol Building and restoring Donald J.’s rightful place on the throne, but for standing up to Vlad the Impaler over in Ukraine. They say if only Trump were still Fuhrer, Ras Putin would never have dared invade Ukraine. These are the same folks who declared that Biden was warning about a phony invasion in the first place, but now it’s his fault.

I’m worn down by these people. The same ones who rallied round the flag for the Gulf Wars, calling anyone who disagreed, traitors. Now America is weak, they say, its leaders are impotent and exhausted. What we need, they say, is a guy who, when in office himself, toadied up to Putin every opportunity he got and who now calls him a genius for how he handled the Ukraine invasion. Very smart guy, that Vlad. Well, I can tell you two guys who don’t qualify as smart or geniuses.

There are always people who admire dictators, authoritarians, bullies and overlords. Strongmen, they call them. There will always be folks who like the idea of a boot on someone else’s neck. So long as it’s not theirs. Apparently we have more of these people among us than I ever realized. They might not pick up a gun and march to the Capitol, but they don’t see anything wrong with the crowd that does.

I’m not sure what qualifies as patriotism anymore. Used to be, a loyalty to your country. Obviously the line has shifted. I suspect when the entire world condemns our boy genius, Putin, these folks will be eating crow and denying they ever cheered him on. Hypocrisy, if not patriotism, is certainly a virtue to them.

Back when I first tried to make a ‘go’ of my stained glass, I paid for a yellow page ad in the local phone book. You know, until there were half a dozen different books. And before the internet made them essentially obsolete … despite the proliferation dropped off on the ground by our mailbox. Invariably I got calls for window repair, safety glass, mirror, about everything glass related EXCEPT stained glass commissions, but … I answered every call and message machine and always they thanked me for getting back to them.

This, I sincerely believe, is our obligation as bizness people. But not, apparently, on the salty South End. Never was, never will be and I should know, having been here 45 years. The new arrivals, folks who maybe need a roof repaired or a toilet fixed, ask me why, when they’ve left a message for Bubba’s Fix-It Shop, Bubba never calls back. And neither does Clyde or Will or any of the other contractors down here or up island. They think maybe they’re being discriminated against by the locals, meaning us old timers. I say, naw, just good ol’ boys who never return calls when the economy is good, only when they’re out of work and the mortgage payment is overdue and the mizzus is threatening to leave them with the kids after the divorce is finalized.

I hired a neighbor to grade and gravel my driveway about a year ago. I’ve called him to see if maybe the gravel is sitting on one of those container ships I see anchored across Saratoga Straits over by Whidbey Island, you know, a supply chain issue. My guy never answers a phone and if you think he’s called me back, I got some prime nettle acreage you might be interested in instead of investing in cryptocurrency. Folks like to believe in the quaint notion of Shopping Local. Me, I gave up on that a long time ago. Nowadays I let my fingers do the walking, maybe not in the phone book, but on the internet. You want to Shop Loco, be my guest, but Bubba’s not calling you back.

One of the dangers of moonshine wit is that the so-called humor will be misunderstood. When I write about the neighbors, they think I’m actually writing about them. That’s the trouble with shotgun humor, it’s imprecise. I was really aiming at the house next door, not theirs. You know that, I know that, but try to convince them last night’s pellet blast rattling off their trailer’s aluminum siding was inadvertent. Gives them the willies and probably bad dreams too. But a writer has to write and a jokester has to joke, collateral damage be damned!

The Flatheads, our vintage car club in these parts, I have it on reputable reporting from a buddy who is one of the happy wrenchers, apparently feel that the name is derogatory, not funny. Now if you’re not an old car guy, you possibly don’t know that a flathead is an engine block before the modern engines we have today. Before the overhead valve engine, the Wankel rotary engine, before the hybrids, before battery powered Teslas. Flatheads were in vogue from the 1890’s to the 1950’s. They had poor compression ratios, weren’t very efficient, couldn’t really rev up like modern ones. Just so you know….

I’ll quit boring you with the history and mechanics of flatheads. All I want to get across here is that calling the car guyz Flatheads is sort of funny, at least to me. Kind of plays off the real thing and hints at, well, maybe these fellows are … okay, maybe it isn’t funny to them. I get that. Two Toke Tom thinks it’s funny, that’s good enough for me. And he’s an unofficial member of the club with his 1966 Volkswagen bus, the one you see with the peace sign and the faded Grateful Dead logo on the front end. Course, Tom thinks most everything is comical.

The point is, humor is in the eye of the beholder and yeah, sometimes a finger too. Just can’t be helped. And no, I’m not pissed off the boyz won’t give my 2010 truck full membership in their exclusive ranks. Has nothing to do with why I decided to call them Flatheads. Really, it doesn’t.

A few of us South Enders were over at the Marina’s Pilot House lounge, a hole in the wall tavern claiming “The Best Burgers on the Island.” Maybe when there wasn’t another restaurant…. It was a Monday night Seahawks game and the few sports fanatics who didn’t subscribe to cable and ESPN were hunkered expectantly at our formica tables drinking bottled beer from the cooler next to the cash register and a table selling golf balls and tees.

Must’ve been a total of three tables, the sum total of cable-deprived islanders. Ralph was grumbling that maybe we should’ve driven the extra ten miles to a bar with TV’s bigger than his laptop screen, but the game had started and the rest of us weren’t all that die-hard a fans and weren’t motoring off island in search of some sportsbar with 16 TV’s mounted strategically so every seat was Front Row. We had a front row right here. The beers were cold, the 19th Hole had advertised the ballgame and we’d taken the bait. Even Ralph accepted the finality of the decision and grabbed another bottle from the trap.

What I think we’ve accepted, all of us, is that sports are king in modern America and football is more popular by far than politics or American Idol. Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses, but he never imagined 15 cable channels of every sport from soccer to ping pong, bobsledding to skateboarding, rugby to kickboxing. As more and more of us couch potatoes hunker down over our laptops and bigscreens, eschewing any and all physical involvement with the real world, we seem addicted to almost anything that smacks of competition, whether it’s football or ballroom dancing.

One of our buddies here at the 19th Hole, Harold, never misses American Idol. He secretly thinks he’s a crooner and I have no doubt whatsoever he imagines himself under the klieg lights on the neon-lit stage, belting out Sinatra to 30 million crazed viewers who plan to vote for him. He’s elbow down with his Bud Lite watching the halftime show. Our team is losing by a field goal and maybe Jerry at the far table is warming up his kicking leg in his private fantasy.

We’re all lost in those fantasies these days. Doesn’t really hurt, I guess, but I suspect a lot of what we used to call real life is only glimpsed on the crawlers at the bottom of the screen while we’re all dancing with the stars. Way of the world, nowadays, I suppose, just living vicariously, way more losers than winners in the Big Game of Life. Although …. we all imagine ourselves the winners. Harold is singing some jingle from the last commercial as he heads to the cooler, only slightly off-key. I decide to have one more beer too. Might as well make it a duet.

If ignorance is bliss, half the country is living in Paradise now. If the level of ignorance proves any indication, Paradise must have tiers of Happiness with the upper level a joyful mix of Qanon believers and anti-science yahoos all blowing bubbles from the soapsuds in their heads. Every day I read a news feed (from the lamestream media) that boggles my already boggled mind. Jewish lasers in outer space starting forest fires, government distribution of crack pipes for addicts in today’s news, and now Marjorie Taylor Greene, House Representative for the great state of Georgia sounding the alarm, warning us of the coming of Gazpacho Police.

Trust me when I say the last thing in the world any of us want in this besieged nation is Gazpacho Police unleased on us citizenry. Hordes of storm troopers checking our pantries for banned Campbell soups, terrorizing housewives and restaurant chefs, followed by … what? Stew Surveillance, Casserole Cops, Chili Patrols, Bouillabasse Swat Teams or the dreaded Chowder Corps? No, the time has come to put our foot down and say No Mas! Get government out of our kitchen! Bad enough government wants to be in our bedrooms, but enough is enough, leave our kitchens alone!

Marjorie T. has sounded the alarm and hopefully her many paranoid followers will take up the call and march, ladles in hand, to the steps of the Capitol for more ‘legitimate political discourse’ even if it means hanging Pelosi and Pence. This Gazpacho onslaught must not stand! All patriotic Americans must defend the galleys of freedom despite the cost, reason be damned! Beat the pots, bang the pans, throw spices to the wind! The time is now, the enemy is at the kitchen door! Be brave, comrades, and sharpen that cutlery!

Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi! Geez, how many times did we hear that chant by Trump and the GOP about Hillary’s role in Libya as Sec. of State? A million? Or more? Followed by Lock Her Up! Lock Her Up! She voluntarily sat for Congressional investigations for ten hours, patiently answering questions by hostile interrogators who assumed that using a personal server for her phone was tantamount to treason. And in the end it was all a tempest in a teapot, no charges to file, no apologies forthcoming. And those emails? Well, it cost her the election when James Comey who headed up the FBI opened up a new investigation right before the time to vote. Thanks, Jim. Job well done.

Now that we know the Prez-in –Exile used his own cellphone, destroyed logs and memos, calendars and meeting notes, where are those outraged Senators and Representatives crying Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! The worm has turned but those worms haven’t. Hypocrisy seems to be the modus operandi of the day. Meanwhile the war drums keep pounding in Ukraine. Remember Ukraine? Donald told them he would withhold military aid unless they uncovered dirt on Biden’s boy, a quid pro quo that should have resulted in an easy case for impeachment but was thwarted a second time. You might think an omelette could be made from all those eggs on shameless faces but you’d be wrong. Russia may or may not be preparing to attack Ukraine — if they do, will anyone think back to Trump’s personal snit fit while the stakes have become incredibly high? If you think so, go to the back of the line.

The Teflon Trump may or may not get away with shredding and flushing evidence in what will no doubt become Toiletgate. Maybe only history will judge the man guilty, but unless you’ve been hiding in a fallout shelter these past years, you’ve been witness to a White House that ignores the law, flaunts morals, repeatedly lies, monetizes the office, rants and raves and threatens perceived enemies in a way that makes Richard Nixon look like a choir boy. Russia, if you’re listening, find his emails.

Suppose the Nazis came to your state for a rally. You remember the Nazis, right? Swastika waving skinheads who hate, well, everybody but white folks. And some white folks too. Gays, liberals, Jews, scum like that. And suppose the governor of your state came out and instead of denouncing this hate-group rally of Holocaust deniers, claimed instead that it was a stunt by the Democratic Party to embarrass him. Well, this is Florida and maybe your governor would rise to the occasion, not dig a deeper hole in his political basement.

These are the times we live in. Trump came out this weekend at a rally to promise that if he were elected once again or the Congress flipped GOP, he’d pardon all those patriots who trashed the Capitol and screamed for Pence and Pelosi’s heads. The Commission to investigate the assault on the Capitol, he heatedly suggested, should look into the crimes of Pence and Pelosi. Then he claimed the Georgia folks looking into his so-called attempt to overturn the election results were really racist prosecutors . Needless to say the Prosecutor has asked the FBI for protection from potential harm from patriots motivated by this kind of accusation.

This would be sadly humorous coming from a man who is under assault from so many legal suits you can hardly keep up with them if it weren’t for the fact most of the Republicans in Congress seem willing to either ignore this stuff or else repeat it as truth. Stolen election, tampered ballot boxes, dead zombies voting, witch hunt witch hunt fake news witch hunt. And you thought it couldn’t happen here in the Yew Ess Aye. Well, it’s happening.

I thought Trump was a piece of work, a fluke who parlayed fame from a dopey reality TV show into a desk at the Oval Office. I figured he flim-flammed a lot of folks into believing he was a savvy businessman, a carnival barker with an ego the size of Mt. Rushmore. What I never believed was a whole lot of folks out there in the purpled majesty were just waiting for a bigot to roll out the red carpet for them to say and act what they’ve kept a little quiet in this oppressive political correctness that asks that we respect one another. You don’t respect people you hate. No telling if you might do what you always wanted to do. Just wait for the word. Just hope for Trump or another one like him. Yeah, it gives me the creeps.

As most of you careful readers know, political correctness down here on the partisan shores of the steamy equatorial South End is probably not one of our more valued virtues. Maybe because we’re all trapped down at this skinny dead end backwash cul-de-sac, we’ve learned — the hard way usually —- that if we want to get along without civil war, we have to disagree without resorting to a full blown arms race. And believe me, we disagree. On most everything. That’s why we all ended up down here at the end of a tilting island at the end of America on the edge of a continental shelf sliding herky-jerky under another tectonic plate.

This week the talk down at Jolene’s Beauty Salon and Boutique revolved exclusively around the passage of the same sex marriage bill. Scissors and tongues snipped and clucked, but Jolene says no blood was spilled. Ronald, her frothy new beautician, might have intentionally miscolored Mrs. Adeline’s silver perm a tad on the electric blue side when she made the comment that ‘gayness’, seemed to her, was a lifestyle choice, but mostly the banter was affable.

Rhonda Wilkins did wonder out loud if the bill’s passage meant she and her no-account husband Tom’s opposite sex marriage would be annulled now. “That’s wistful thinking,” Wanda blurted from two chairs away in the middle of a henna touch-up on the minister’s mizzus who steadfastly refused to be drawn into a curling iron showdown, and if Rhonda hadn’t been curled herself and heat-lamped into her chair, she might have stormed out, but by the end of the drying cycle she was cooled down and still unhappily married to the love of her life whose zenith of ambition was to reach retirement before cirrhosis.

So Valentine’s Day on the metrosexual South End this year promises to be a cross between Mardi Gras and a Pink St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe no parades by the Diner, but a lot of closets opened for an early spring cleaning. Believe me, the South End could always stand a little more love…. And just in case Mrs. Adeline is right, some of us should think about renewing those old marriage vows. On the outside chance there really might be a statute of limitation.