The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Most of our crime on the South End is local. You got basically one way off the island, even most criminals can figure out how easy it is to put up a Roadblock by the bridge. But occasionally we get Outside Trouble. Rare, but it happens. Last year one of my old band members, who rents his castle a little to the south of us, dropped by his tenant where he planned to meet his realtor so he could discuss why his house hadn’t sold in, oh, four or five years.

His tenant, when he knocked on the door and finally shouted inside, came down the stairs in a state of disrepair, having been tied up, pistol whipped and shot in the shoulder by two ‘friends’ from Seattle who’d purportedly come by at 7 or 8 in the morning to, what she claimed!, give her some money they owed. Instead, I guess they decided to keep the money and take hers. Happens all the time …. Just not a whole lot on the South End. Did I mention our victim denied being shot?

It’s probably lucky for us that most criminals think the police are as dumb as they are. If not decidedly dumber….

My ex-band member — I did mention EX band member, didn’t I? — believed every word, even if the deputies who arrived later were somewhat more suspicious. Still believes she wasn’t shot, last time I talked to him, even when I asked about the hole in her shoulder, entry and exit. Probably doesn’t believe the Band 86’d him either. So when she gets released from the hospital, he takes pity on her and lets her stay rent-free until she can get back on her feet.

About two days later he gets a call from another ex-band member, neighbor Jim, who informs him there’s a box truck loading up in the driveway and maybe he ought to come on down and see what’s what. Which he does. Only to find two guys busy loading his artwork and furniture into the truck. He politely tells them this stuff belongs to him and they apologize and say they’re helping his tenant load her stuff and didn’t realize. All a misunderstanding, an honest mistake, see? He puts his stuff in the garage so they won’t misidentify it from hers, goes home satisfied that things worked out, and of course, they load up all his paintings and furniture and hit the road, where, since he’s a trusting sort, no roadblock awaits them at the bridge off the island.

If there’s a moral to this story, hell if I know what it is. Other than to say, if you’re ever starting your own Band, be sure you audition your prospective musicians.

Used to be, in the spring, we’d haul our firewood in.  The winter storms blew part down and we’d cut the rest.  The slash, we’d stack up and burn.  Sometimes for a couple of days, sometimes for nearly a week.  Keep dragging the downfall over to a bed of coals so deep it’d catch the root systems of the long-gone old growth firs on fire and they’d smolder for weeks, spreading along 500 year old tributaries of pitch, sort of an underground river of fire.

We knew every square inch of our nettle forest.  The places where the bleeding hearts had gotten established.  The gullies where nothing but ferns grew beneath the cedars.  The salmonberry savannahs and the nettle jungles.  We found the old shelter where Yazel’s kids had made a fort and built a temple with homemade idolatrous animal gods.  We discovered the pioneers’ dumps with the old dishes and the linament bottles.  We knew what their favorite whisky was and when they got lightbulbs.

You explore your woods and you discover the past.  The stumps of those giant Doug firs with the gash still there where the loggers shoved a springboard so they could saw above the rock hard wood at the base — you still see em.  You find the barbed wire strangling a maple, then finally it’s swallowed inside where the fence line kept the cows.  Cedar snags charred from the fire of the 1890’s when the entire South End burned.

Some of the past is too far gone.  The old barn didn’t have good timber left.  The pig pen barely did.  Some of my own shelters and outbuildings are long gone now, leaving not a clue for the next folks.  The woods is a history book.  It’s a museum going to ruin.  It’s a lesson to me every year that what we do will be swallowed and lost and forgotten.  Something about that I find a comfort, I guess.  Knowing that we’ll disappear back into the rot and the rust as surely as the trees will fall — something humbling about this.  Something part of something relentlessly ongoing.

Every year we go back in there.  And some day we won’t come out.  Someone else will burn the tree that grows on me.  Someone else can warm themselves on that…  I just hope they pay a small respect.  We aren’t the first.  We sure aren’t the last….

The Pope came out the other day to issue one of his proclamations to the World. He said the people who had pets instead of children were selfish. God meant us to procreate, not pamper Fido. Ordinarily I don’t pay much attention to the Holy See, not being Catholic and not being a very religious sort even, but this caught my attention, I suspect, because we never had kids and for quite awhile, and I’m a little embarrassed to tell you, we had a dog, old Dr. Gonzo who has now gone to Pet Heaven along with our cat Kitty. And while I’m in full confessional, we had some goldfish too, albeit briefly, plus some tetras and a couple of angelfish. But no kids. Not one.

How were we to know the level of selfishness this was? And now, of course, we’re a bit beyond child bearing age and probably couldn’t even adopt kids from some agency even if we wanted. Not even Afghani orphans, I’m betting. At any price. We didn’t know we were egocentric back when we made our choice. We thought, geez, there’s billions of human beings crowding up the planet, maybe a few of us ought to resist the urge to make babies. We thought we were being moral, magnanimous even, for slowing down our carbon footprint by a helluva lot, taking one or two or six future mouths to feed and clothe and buy I-phones for out of the equation. We thought we were doing the Right Thing.

Besides, we didn’t really want kids, tell you the truth. Me, I didn’t think I’d be a very good Dad. I wish a lot of folks took that into consideration. There’s way too many grandparents taking care of their kids’ kids once their children realized drugs were way more fun than child rearing. And who knows, maybe having kids made them turn to drugs. But I’ll leave that to the psychologists and the Pope himself. All I know for sure is if you want to have kids, you ought to really want to have kids, not fall into it by accident or because you were lonely or your friends were having kids or your parents wanted grandkids. You should want them because you want them. Period. And with apologies to the Holy See, I think it’s okay to have pets too, you know, if you plan to take care of them. Even if you don’t have children.

I suspect most of you slip into the Metaverse with an avatar that’s, well, for want of a more polite description, just this side of reality’s Goodwill fashion. Let’s assume that you’re new to the Meta, just feeling your away around the virtual possibilities, not exactly comfortable yet, sort of like the new student in the big high school your family just dropped you into when their job transferred them. Been there myself so I understand. But c’mon, it’s time to up your game. You want to hang with the geeks and the losers, fine, but if you want to play with the In Crowd, you need shoes. I’m talking NFT,non fungible token Nike sneakers, bro. I’m talking about taking a walk in style through the Metaverse.

And that’s just the first baby steps, Amigo. The Metaworld can be your oyster if you learn to navigate. It’s the wild wild west meets the raw excitement of venture capitalism. Need some digs to crash between adventures? No problema, pal, we got real estate, comfy and virtual. We’re selling properties and the market is red hot. An investment today may mean riches tomorrow if you’re courageous. The folks who think oh, land isn’t real, houses aren’t real, those Nike fashion statements on your avatar’s feet are only virtual, well, I got news for those slackards, the virtual world is most definitely real, as real as a bitcoin, brother and getting more real every nano second.

You got something you want to advertise, rent a billboard in Virtual World! You want to make some fast crypto, buy the billboard and rent it to the rest of the Metaverse. Grab up some mall properties and become the next gen’s landlord! The Meta is expanding, my friend, and you are at the threshold of dreams. This is no time to be a shrinking violet. This is not your mama’s world and you are no longer mama’s boy. Grab the virtual reins and boldly go where no corporeal man has gone before. If it sounds fantastic, BINGO!, you’re right on target. So snatch up a pair of those NFT Nikes and stride into the virtual universe. The future belongs to the brave!

Down here in the soggy trailers of the South End we got plenty of folks who find it impossible to throw out anything. We call them Hoarders. Cars sit strangled by blackberry vines out back, garage is full of old parts rusting slowly, closets are jammed with clothes that haven’t been worn in years, sheds are piled high with lumber being eaten by powder beetles. You ask them why they keep that crap and they’ll give you the fish face like you were a complete idiot and tell you they might need that lawnmower that stopped running a decade ago for parts. The lumber they might build another shed with … you know, to store more crap.

Believe me, I’m not casting the first stone. I got way too many sheds myself filled with stuff from 30 or 40 years ago when money was tight and all those plumbing and electrical left-overs were kept ‘just in case’. Just in case comes along about as often as sunshine in November down here. Truth is, we’re too lazy to haul it to the dump. Although, some of us are serious and serial Hoarders. I have a buddy who has tunnels in his shack to navigate between the kitchen and bedroom and bathroom. He lives like an ant, burrowed into the ground. His place is a Black Hole, the gravitational pull sucking everything in, allowing nothing out.

We recently moved my old man from his house in Wisconsin to an apartment at the assisted living joint down the road, a downsizing that required tossing half his stuff. Considering that we moved him from Georgia over 15 years earlier and tried to downsize Mom and him then, encountering nothing but resistance, we told them we’d be back in 6 months with a U-Haul so they needed to do it themselves, no ifs ands or buts. We ended up needing two giant U-Haul trucks to move them. Most of what we moved was worthless junk. So years later we still had that worthless junk to sort through, toss, take to Goodwill or find someone to take the stuff. It took us nearly a week. Then a month later we had to move him again to a less independent apartment. Took us four days. And a month ago we moved him again into the nursing unit. Three days. Same drill, same junk.

Believe me, you do that for your parents, you’ll take an unjaundiced eye to your own closets and sheds once you come home. I took three large loads of clothes I hadn’t worn in years to the thrift stores. The dump loads barely make a dent, but it’s a start. Someone offered me a very nice cabinet the other day, something a few years back I would have grabbed, but not now. No more stuff! It’s the wrong direction now. It’s time to let go of these things. I don’t want to live in an ant farm when I’m decrepit. And I don’t have kids to clean out the debris of a lifetime.

January 6th is today. Donald Trump and his kids were just subpoenaed a few days ago. Jeffrey Epstein’s pimp was found guilty of procuring underage girls for their pleasure palace and the Theranos CEO was convicted of corporate fraud. Omicron is lashing the country with record infection rates and I’m noticing more and more folks in the grocery stores defying the mask mandate. It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood.

The Civil War, yeah, that Civil War, rages on. And you thought it ended at Appomattox when Lee surrendered to Grant. Or when Clark Gable walked out on Scarlet…. C’mon, the War never ended. We call it the Culture Wars now, but it’s the same battle. White vs. anyone not white. Fundamental Christians vs. anyone not their sect. Heteros vs. anyone different. Rural vs. Urban, Fox News vs. Hollywood. Trump roared into office with dog whistles and barely concealed racism. Build the wall, build the wall! Keep em out, lock em up, knock em down! Don’t let them tear down the statues to the Confederate heroes! Don’t teach any history that blemishes our proud heritage! Whitewash it! Our kids don’t need to hear that stuff!

Make America Great Again! Bring back the Eisenhower era and declare Joe McCarthy the courageous commie fighter, bring back Father Knows Best, pretend to go to church, the True Church, not the synagogue or the mosque. Worship the True God, not Allah. Abide by the scriptures, no homosexuals, no equal rights for women. Times were good back then. People knew their place! We knew who the Enemy was.

The Enemy is us, we the people. January 6th is a day of reckoning. Democracy, that great experiment, is a far more fragile enterprise than we thought for most of our lives. Maybe we were just naïve….

My neighbors in the suburb across the road have a Homeowners Association. Which is a simpler way of saying they have created a set of complicated bylaws that promote factions between themselves to fight for – or against – additional dues on tree cutting – or growing if they’re over 17 feet tall – water restrictions, weed control, building requirements, paint color schemes, roof materials, on street parking restrictions, beach trail maintenance, bulkhead repairs and nationality of their prospective spouses. In essence, they’ve manufactured the potential for their own small civil war.

Of course if they didn’t have covenants, bylaws, rules and regs, board meetings and various committees, I’m sure by now anarchy would rule, neighbors would be shot, trees would block views of the Sound and the Olympics, vacant lots would grow weeds and abandoned lawnmowers, windows would be boarded over, some houses would sport fuchsia paintjobs and the whole she-bang would look like our very own Kabul.

Welcome to the South End! Welcome to my neighborhood! When the turnip truck I rode in on dropped me off back in ’77, the ‘hood was a cut over woods across the road. For 40 years house after house got built, one or so a year, folks came and then left, the politics shifted, money rolled in, new owners remodeled, outbuildings were added, the well was updated, the bulkhead was replaced, the wealthy outnumbered the less wealthy, and, of course, dividing lines shifted accordingly. Welcome to America!

Lately there’s a new disruption in the Force. The Big Storm of ’21 knocked multiple trees on the current bulkhead built decades ago and knocked a 30 foot section out into the wind and waves which promptly tore the logs away. Replacement had already been on the table, some folks arguing against it, some for, some wanting to wait, some wanting immediate action. The Storm left a gaping hole in all those plans as well as in the bluff behind the breach. Think of a hornet’s nest slapped with a big stick. Think of million dollar houses sticking off the bluff. Think of refugees pouring in from across the road to our side, tent encampments, razor wire, U.N. aid, cholera, a community gone mad. Welcome to the World!

All I can hope for now is me and the mizzus become the new waterfront. Good luck, I guess, to the old neighbors. They may have to relocate to some other island with less stringent covenants.

Ah, it’s déjà vu all over again is what you’re thinking. Same old politics, same old global warming warnings, same old faux news, same old Covid with a new name. You can hardly stand to turn on the news anymore, same as me. Another report on the plague statistics, a plea to vaccinate or wear masks, another record warm/cold/wet/wild weather phenomenon, airline cancellations, partisan politics, the feeling that you heard this yesterday, same stories, you heard it the day before and the day before that. You have a hard time remembering if this Covid pandemic started last year or the year before that. You no longer care what day of the week it is. Or month. Or …

It was two years ago. I know, it took me awhile too. Two years compressed into one long one, a stay-at-home, quarantine time. Zoom meetings, online shopping, canceled parties, mask mandates, anti-mask mandates. Oh right, there was an election in there somewhere, then an attack on the Capitol, a Stop the Steal, a Congressional investigation into the January 6th insurrection, wasn’t there an impeachment trial too? It’s all lost in a fog. Loss of taste, loss of smell, loss of memory, all symptoms, all long haul conditions. If you believe in the pandemic at all …. And a good unvaccinated percentage of us don’t.

But here it is, another year, a not so fresh start, time for resolutions, eh? Why bother, is what you’re thinking, same as me. Nothing’s changing, nothing is going to make this one different than the last one or the one before that, nothing is the best you can hope for. So ring in the New Year if you want. We canceled the party we’d had for the past three decades, we canceled the bonfire we thought we might have with a few other survivors, we may cancel 2022. We plan to just hunker down and celebrate in the same way we’ve celebrated the past 700 or so days of the lost years. Happy New Year, everybody! Make a toast! Hope for the best! Maybe next year will be different. But don’t bet the farm on it.

Today is New Year’s Eve, plenty of time to make those resolutions for 2022. Being a South Ender, it’s difficult to conjure up anything much that needs improvement, but then again, nobody’s perfect, I guess, so I’ve been wracking my brain for some small trait that might need bettering. So far I’m kind of stumped.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I think I’m Buddha or anything, not as if all my waking thoughts are pure as the driven snow, not like I couldn’t find a flaw or two in my persona, but jeez, you start messing with a good thing, hellfire, you might just be asking for trouble, create some distortion in the cosmos, open yourself up to worry and woe. Sure don’t want to start the New Year off on the wrong foot, stumble into 2022 when a waltz might have been more apropos.

Oh, sure, I suppose I could be more generous maybe with those donations to the Food Bank or the Senior Center. And I could probably dial up my Humility a notch, but I’m not really after Sainthood, not that I was actually in the running. At least I don’t think so …. And besides, it’s hard, really hard, to be humble as a long term South Ender. We Old Timers just try not to be Braggers, about as close to humility as we can get.

So maybe, once again, I’ll leave the Resolutions to all the rest of you. And please, whatever you do, don’t resolve to move down here on the South End thinking that migration or refugee status would suffice. It’s not that simple and honestly, some of my fellow Enders, just between you and me, could use some serious improvement. Maybe that’s my Resolution: to help these folks. To be a Light and a Way! To show them the Path!!

Then again, that attitude just puts a dent in my Humility Index. Naw, folks got to make their own Resolutions. Sorry, you’re on your own. Same as last year. Good luck to ya! You’ll be fine. Probably.

One of the things we don’t talk about much down here on the sunny South End is depression.  I know, it’s hard to imagine.  Sort of a worm in the apple of the Garden of Eden — before God made the rule not to eat it.  But we got everything from Seasonal Affective Disorder to Monday Morning Blues that last until Friday to outright disabling pull-the-covers-over-our-head-and-wait-until-spring depression.

I was always of the school of thought that depression was a symptom of bad marriages or crappy jobs or poor life choices.  External stuff but something you could change.  I don’t believe that anymore.  I got friends who struggle, who wrestle, who go 10 rounds with this stuff and in the end, lose on a TKO by the first cup of coffee.  We all know folks who try all manner of self- medication.  Sort of leads to other problems which compound the original diagnosis, maybe like mistaking gasoline for water to fight a smoldering fire.  Next thing you know, you got a 3 alarm.

I know it’s hard to believe we could suffer severe bouts of depression, living as we do in Shangri-La-La, but even Paradise has its ups and downs.  Don’t try to tell me Heaven is all sunshine and bliss — I know better.  God herself has more than a few Bad Days, at least judging by the state of the world out there.  You come home —All Alone — to the news that there’s more genocide, more torture, another couple of wars and a few new extinctions —- and that’s just on this planet, well, I bet She needs a few stiff drinks to get through the evening news.  Who wouldn’t?

I’m no psychiatrist so I don’t offer up panaceas any more.  Religion, drugs, self help advice:  might as well sing Sinatra to the wind.  I hear there are meds now, everything from Prozac to lithium, that may or may not help.  This world is hard enough without seeing it through a Blue Veil.  If you’re suffering through a cyclical bout, don’t think you’re alone.  I realize it doesn’t help much, but hang on.  Reality’s a slippery slope, but Hope is a ladder.  Even down here we always have to climb our way back up….