The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Halloween is a few days away and if you aren’t already frightened out of your wits at the onslaught of Trick or Treat merchandising, hang onto your goblin hat! The soothsayers of Market Street are predicting that this so-called supply chain block — which is not the same as block chain so don’t cash in those bitcoins – will empty store shelves way before Christmas unless Santa and Walmart hire truck drivers, buy containers and unload those anchored cargo ships off shore by hand.

The fear mongers are telling you, the savvy shopper, to SHOP NOW if you want something under your Yuletide tree besides Manchin’s coal. Bleak pickings, kids, backlogged orders, missing supply chain parts, unhappy elves accustomed to working at home virtually, pandemic closures of 3rd world factories, nothing short of a Black Holiday when your usual last minute shopping leaves you with picked-over cheap junk nobody else wanted.

Scrooge himself would weep! What’s a capitalist consumer society to do without consumer goods? You going to tell little Sally and Jimmy their Nintendo wasn’t available? You going to explain the supply chain economics to them, hoping to stop the wailing and the crying? Good luck, pardner. You might as well shoot the Tooth Fairy and serve up the Easter Bunny while you’re at it, nobody wants a Norman Rockwell holiday in post pandemic America, not on your mortgaged life.

So … what choice do you have? Only one, near as I can figure. Get in your SUV and head to the nearest department store. Okay, just kidding. Get on your computer and get to Amazon before all the other paranoid shoppers beat you to the Good Stuff. Sure, it’s not even Halloween, I know that. If you’re smart – and I know you are – you’ll order next year’s presents too.

Last week I drove an hour to get my Covid booster shot, barely 6 months since my 2ndf Phizer. More people in this country have died of this epidemic than the 1919 Spanish Flu, 700,000 and counting. And yet I still hear folks saying those deaths weren’t from Covid, they were from the common flu or underlying conditions or … well, those are phony numbers.

So … we’re back to where we were a year ago DESPITE THE FACT that we have a vaccine available to everyone in this country that would end this plague PDQ if only folks would roll up their sleeve and stop listening to conspiracy theories and crackpot idiocy. Course, they’re not going to stop believing whatever it is they want to believe. They’re not going to roll up their sleeves. They’re not going to protect themselves or us, not on their lives.

What I think is half of us have succumbed to a brain-eating virus or worm or bacteria. They still walk and talk and make babies, but their minds have been destroyed by, I don’t know, aliens or Facebook or remnant rebels of the Confederacy. Maybe this is really a Covid-induced quasi-coma, an undiagnosed malady that renders its victims incapable of reason or logic, a version of intellectual zombie-ism without the appetite for human flesh.

Or … maybe it’s those of us who think science is benign and the vaccines are safe and the earth is still roundish, maybe we’re the deluded, the victims, the last holdouts for logic and reason, the gullible who think the coronavirus is lethal when really it’s just a tactic to divide this once great nation.

Either way, it looks like another year to think about it. Hopefully the zombies don’t develop a taste for human blood in the meantime.

What, me worry? Gee, just that human life on this hotbox of a planet is doomed? C’mon, let’s be optimistic, look at the bright side, the cockroaches will live on, maybe evolve into big brained bugs, solve the global warming conundrum, build pyramids four feet high, worship their gods, set up governments, fight wars with the termites, continue the proud legacy we homo sapiens couldn’t quite extend into the planetary future we screwed up. We had our shot, gave it a brief run, but decided we preferred Cadillacs and speedboats to survival. Party on, Bro!

We kind of lived for today. Be Here Now, right? The future, the next generation, the kids, the grandkids, well, we figured it would work out fine. Okay, we didn’t worry much about that, a little bizzy making ourselves happy, the next generation be damned. Sure, a bit selfish, but hey, we were the Entitled Ones, the folks who couldn’t lift a finger to help those who were poor or hungry or homeless, those sad people who apparently didn’t invest in the stock market or go to college or get hired by the tech industry, what can you do if they won’t help themselves??

We all had an equal chance, right? Not our fault you were born in Yemen. Grab those bootstraps and haul yerself up, climb the ladder to the top, pal. No whining! Can’t have that whimpering. No, sir, cowboy up! So what if we left a few messes to clean up, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, now can you? But hey, give us some props. After all, we invented the internet and social media and bitcoin mining. Plus, how about artificial intelligence? We built machines smarter than all of us put together and if you work it right, they’ll solve all these world problems in no time flat. Pretty soon they’ll be improving themselves. And figure out they don’t really need us wreaking havoc on their planet, the one they will soon have Total Control of. I mean, how hard would it be to outsmart the people who believe in Qanon? One prosthetic tied behind their back and they’d still win.

Maybe it’s for the best. Artificial Intelligence, the next evolutionary stage of life on Earth. Unless, of course, you’re one of those bipedal Darwin deniers, then … well, good luck! When the droids get done with you, you’ll wish you really were a monkey’s uncle.

My parents, when us little sprouts were growing up, never made much of a fuss over us. If we got good grades, they nodded approvingly. And if we didn’t, they told us to buckle down and smarten up, school wasn’t some game. They never came to our sports events to watch their star kids play and we were glad they didn’t because, well, to be honest, we weren’t stars. We were just your basic kids, vanilla, ordinary, okay.

When they became grandparents, however, things changed. Their grandkids, my god, they were Einsteins, they were football stars, they were just all around Wows. My friends who have grandkids have those same kids, all of them the smartest, best looking, most talented brats you ever had the privilege to hear bragged about. I don’t know, maybe if I had kids, they’d be superheroes too. But I didn’t and I bet they wouldn’t be if I did.

When I look back at my childhood (okay, the early years, not the present years), I drifted through sandlot baseball games, marbles, some fights, some homemade soap box derby races, all the stuff we hoodlums did back in the halcyon days of Eisenhower’s America. I didn’t think I had to be a genius. Or a basketball star. Or a movie actor. My folks didn’t push us munchkins out into a competitive universe with a prescription for failure by convincing us we were God’s gift to the free world. We were encouraged to try stuff, everything from track and field to chess to debate clubs, but they didn’t come down and play soccer mom and get into fights with the coach or the parents of our opponents. They’d ask how it went and if we got our butts kicked, they said better luck next time. These weren’t life and death competitions.

I worry that we’re trying too hard now. Sure, we’d all like to think that the fruit that fell near the tree is special, the sweetest, the tastiest, the fastest growing, the most flowers. But I suspect we just set the kids up for disappointment. Ballet. Dropped out. Lacrosse. Never really liked it. Cheerleader. Couldn’t do a head stand. Choir. Had a tin ear. Academics. Got a C+. Life. Just normal.

My folks accepted normal. So did we. What they wanted for us was happiness. It’s not a bad wish. In their own hands-off way, they taught us how to get there.

Oddly enough, Americans are quitting their jobs in record numbers. Debbie Randolph, down the road from me, just told her boss to shove it. Ten bucks an hour and unvaccinated customers giving her a hard time over mandated mask wearing, that was the last straw she said the other day over our fourth cup of coffee, who needs the aggravation? Plenty of other neighbors are pulling the plug too, fed up with low wages and fellow employees calling in sick, leaving them with double the workload. My old bandmate Cindy retired early from teaching elementary school. She told me she just couldn’t face another year of pandemic lockdowns, masks, virtual learning, who knows what else? I asked if she’d be all right and she smiled. More than all right, she laughed. Way more.

Welcome, America, to the South End, where work has never been a path to heaven, more a dead end to happiness. What I don’t understand is what took you so long? Long commutes, bad bosses, low pay, soul sucking shifts. Thank god for the pandemic, I guess, a mandatory time out for a lot of folks, time to ponder the meaning of work in the 21st century. I mean, who wouldn’t crave a career in an Amazon distribution center? Course, there’s always the fear of homelessness, starvation and the judgement of our fellow inmates. “Did you hear Mike Rathkin quit his job at the mill? Spends all his time at the tavern with those other bum friends of his. It’s a shame. His wife Jenny is just beside herself what’s going to become of them, her pregnant again. It’s beyond pathetic.”

Every time I go in the island grocery store now I see new faces. Younger faces. Sure, I expect prices will go up if the wages do. Fine by me. Pay em a decent salary. All these gulags, time to listen to the prisoners. What’s the point of working if your paycheck won’t pay the rent and food? Down in Seattle and Gomorrah the service industry ( I love that term, service industry), the maids and the fast food workers, the nursing home staff, the daycare teachers, the waitresses and cooks, the school bus drivers, the janitors and the clerks, the service industry pays nowhere near what it would cost to live in the city limits. So now add the commute to the outlying hinterlands, the gas, the wear and tear on the car, on and on, you bet quitting looks like a reasonable option.

It did for me and that was 50 years ago. I know, a man ahead of his time.

From the New York Times: BIDEN’S PROPOSAL TO EMPOWER IRS RATTLES BANKS AND THEIR CUSTOMERS

This is the sort of story I love. Sleepy Joe wants to find folks who hide their assets, work under the table or just plain scam the tax folks. Billions of dollars are lost, meaning, you and me pick up an even larger share of the defense budget. The rich, the corporations, the Pandora folks, well, we’re happy to spare them the burden of helping with health care or cancer cures or infrastructure rebuilding or education or … well, almost everything. Spare the rich! The American motto these days. Amazon pay taxes? Gee, why, they’re the job creators.

So here’s the New York Times story that the Big Banks (oh, and their customers, at least the Big Boys) are rattled that the IRS might be peeking at their finances. It’s okay that they look at mine, I guess, but whoa, that’s an invasion of privacy when they check into folks with a helluva lot of money and lawyers who can hide it for them. The Republicans, those good fellas who keep harping about the deficits and the debt ceiling, asking how are we going to pay for these programs for the poor, for climate change mitigation, for new infrastructure, for safety needs, for all that stuff that looks like socialism to them, they’re unwilling to hire more IRS auditors to make sure the tax cheaters pay their fair share, oh no, not that! Better to forget about those programs than find an honest way to fund them.

I’m a customer of my bank and I can tell you with some certainty, I’m not rattled by empowering the IRS to collect taxes that aren’t being paid right now. It’s a little like telling the cops don’t arrest the folks in the mansions, better to go after the petty crooks. Wait, we basically do that now. The rich made the tax laws and even then there are plenty of them who want to keep all their money, to hell with the needs of the larger society. They’re privileged and they want to keep it that way. The debt ceiling the GOP doesn’t want to raise is, in good part, the debt incurred by reducing even further the taxes on the wealthy and the corporations. God forbid we audit them to see if they’re playing by the rules. So no, I’m not rattled, but … I wouldn’t mind rattling their cages.

As much as I try, I can’t keep up with demographic distinctions like Millenial, Gen X or … hellfire, I can’t even remember the names of these categories. Apparently I’m a Boomer, one of those post-war babies spawned by a relief that the Great War was over and returning soldiers and sailors were happy to settle down in the newly built suburbs and raise a family. You know, a nuclear family, not really a reference to the atomic bomb although I’m not real sure.

We’re all old now, us Boomers, most of the WW2 folks have gone to their graves, buried with I LIKE IKE buttons, probably disappointed with us kids, selfish, spoiled brats who thought drugs were the answer, work was for suckers and the future was a cash machine. Some of us invented the internet, smartphones and social media — we thought it would make the world a better place and us a helluva lot richer. One out of two, I guess.

What am I spozed to tell the kids we’re leaving broken promises to? Rusting bridges, crumbling freeways, huge debts, lost wars, high health care costs, rampant homelessness, Covid crazies, tax breaks for the rich, a planet going to hell in a golf cart … that it’s not my fault? No mea culpa? Okay, Boomer, thanks for a few trillion to pay back.

Gotta say, I don’t have kids so I don’t have to look them in the eye and say What, me guilty? Sure tell the next generations we left them all the tools they need. Facebook, Instagram, Fox News, plenty of information combined with the world wide web, go forth and prosper. Pay off our planetary mortgage, figure out what to do with the homeless and the refugees, save the planet we used to power our jet skis and our big fin Cadillacs. We’ll leave you old Elvis records, fentanyl, arsenals of automatic weapons, no forwarding addresses and a hearty Good Luck! Adversity builds character, ask our Depression Era parents. No need to thank us. No need at all….

Harry works down at the O-Zi-Ya Body Shop. He’s an artist with bondo, makes a ‘total’ look brand new after pulling the dents and replacing crushed quarter panels, has a real nice touch with an airless in the spray booth. Back about 4 years ago, Harry was a ‘he’. Six foot four, muscular in a lithe sort of way, moved car parts around like baskets of daisies. I didn’t know him real well, I guess, mostly because my beater cars never got treated to the Body Shop make-over. Dents, scratches, bullet holes —- I’m not spending money for pigs’ lipstick.

So imagine my surprise when Harry walks up my drive during our annual Mother’s Day Studio Tour … in high heels, a tasteful above-the-knee pleated skirt, grey blouse and a matching handbag. “How you doing, man?” I ask nonchalantly and Harry explains, no doubt for the 1000th time, he’s no longer a man. Course, judging by the 5 o’clock shadow of a beard, he’s not quite a woman either. Which, he tells me earnestly, will take the hormone treatments some time to kick in.

Even on the live-and-let-live South End, this was, well , this was … different. And we’re accustomed to different. Harry toured the studio and we chatted it up and when he left I gave him a manly sort of hug and said, “Good luck, man,” and immediately corrected myself. Harry gave me a wink and a laugh and sallied forth down the drive.

Harry quit the Body Shop — not because the boyz couldn’t deal with The Change — they still speak fondly of him. Her. You know what I mean. She wanted a new life to go with the new her.

A couple of years ago I ran into Harry. Harriet now. She was installing fountains. Hauled the rocks, dug the ponds, wired the pumps, plumbed the waterfalls. “I’m an artist, Skeeter” she declared. She was welding sculptural components, creating light shows, running her own business. “Life’s good, then?” I asked.

She broke into a radiant smile, one I never saw at the Body Shop. Leaning down to whisper in my ear, she fairly bubbled, “It’s a joy my boy, it’s a joy!” All I can say is the path to happiness is a whole lot harder for some, even on the salty South End, but it isn’t impossible.

I hear folks say all the time how the country no longer makes anything, everything’s outsourced, manufactured in China, then imported. Course, they’re running up to Wal-Mart or ordering on Amazon for all this cheap junk, save them a few bucks, half of it going back into gasoline on their SUV. Here on the self-sufficient South End, we still make stuff. Okay, mostly because we couldn’t afford to buy that stuff new. But partly because there’s still a vestige of pioneer pride. You make something yourself, you maybe understand how much work goes into it, you maybe understand the real worth of it, you maybe become a part of it and it becomes a part of you.

We got about 2 million artists down here who paint and sculpt and carve and you name it. They make stuff. That’s what art is. Creation. If they could sell it, they’d be ‘job creators’. Always that damn ‘if’. I admit, half of artistic inspiration is job avoidance, or, in my case, about 100% is. Workaphobia, almost a crippling malady. I’ve had friends, who fancy themselves psychotherapists, suggest that if I spent half as much time employed as I do avoiding work, I’d be rich. Course I explain that then I’d have to do taxes or hire an accountant, set up wills, keep records. I’m just a little too busy for that kind of complexity.

The thing is, see, if you do your own car repair, fix your own leaky pipes, dig your own garden, catch your own food, prune your own fruit trees, cook your dinners, play your own musical instrument, sing your own songs —- you don’t have time to work some silly crappy job. No way. You’d fall behind, the chores would gang up, the shack would rot, the whole she-bang would come undone, entropy would rule, chaos would ensue. Down here, you do not have the luxury of a job! What you got, as consolation, is making your own life yours. Not buying it on credit, piece by piece, from a factory filled with people paid next to nothing in a country that makes stuff for all of us who don’t have time to do it ourselves.