The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I guess most of us have asked ourselves the Big Cosmic Questions. We’ve traveled our separate paths looking for Answers. We’ve read the holy scriptures, we’ve chanted OM until we’re blue in the face, we’ve sat in quiet meditation or done yoga poses, mindful of our breath, listening for the First Sound. We’ve wanted something to believe in that seems, well, More. Physics maybe, maybe the Bible, maybe the Book of Mormon or the Koran. Maybe poetry or a sign held up by some mendicant on 5th and Jefferson that says Will Work for Food God Bless.

Maybe something is missing. Maybe something in us just likes a Spiritual Journey…. We go to Tibet up 15,000 feet to eat rice and sit at the naked feet of the monks. We seek a swami who hasn’t spoken in 20 years in some jungle Hindu cave. We listen for Clues in AM pop songs and signs in the numerology of license plates. We envy the natives who seem Closer to something important. We see Jesus in the stain on a box of Cheerios. We read Carlos Castenada and watch for Omens, we’ve smoked ganja, we’ve eaten magic mushrooms, we’ve consulted psychiatrists, we read self-help books.

We’ve searched for the Wise Man, the Guru, the Priest and the Monk and come up short. We thought Happiness was an answer. Or Wisdom. Or all you need is Love, yeah yeah yeah.

I’ve lived 65 years in this body, in this mind, and I have yet to meet anyone that might come close to that Enlightened Person. I sat once with the Head Honcho of the B’Hai. Nice guy. Something to be said for that, I thought at the time, and still do.

The world is a riddle and maybe the riddle is the world. There comes a time, at least for me, when the paths seemed … oh … dead ends. That the questions themselves were wrong. That the seeking itself was the problem. That the mysteries would always be mysteries. That this life is just exactly what you think it is. That the universe is exactly what you experience. If there’s More, what does it matter?

So be careful, I guess, what you think this life is. Down here on the unenlightened South End, it seems plenty. And try to be good to your neighbor, it might be me.

When I left college I moved up to a Polish homestead in Northern Wisconsin, no running water other than a hand pump in the front yard, leaned-over outhouse out beside the ‘summer kitchen’ and wood for heat. I thought it would be nice not to work for awhile. I’d saved some money from working through college, which tells you college didn’t cost what it costs today. I think my last tuition payment was $250 for a semester. This was the Univ. of Wisconsin – Madison. That was 1972.

I know most folks would prefer to jump right into their careers, get a jump with that degree, maybe plan to travel later. You know, when they’d established themselves. Me, I’m not much for procrastinating what seems fun. Work, that’s a different deal. I’d pretty much burned out on work back in college. It wasn’t that I was thinking Retirement at 21, but a Prolonged Vacation seemed just the ticket. Give me time to think, time to relax, time to ponder the Future.

My next door neighbors, cousins of my wife at the time, were unfamiliar with those kind of concepts. They saw two people, so desperately poor they had to live rent free in an old farmhouse no one had inhabited in decades, pumping their water from outside, burning firewood to keep warm. It was inconceivable to them that we were not in Need. And so Eddie wandered over one autumn day to announce he had set up an interview for me at the local schoolbus company. I said, “Gee Eddie, you didn’t have to go and do that….” But Eddie waved me off. “It’s the least I can do,” he called as he walked back home.

This was bad news indeed. Should I call the bus company and decline my interview? Eddie would think — no, he would know — what a shirker I was. I decided to go to the interview. I wore some jeans that were mostly holes, threw on an ugly Goodwill shirt and wandered down to the bus lot, figuring, if I acted strangely enough, looking the way I looked, long hair past my shoulders, they’d make the interview brief and send me home. Easy. Great solution.

Ted and Wally, the owner and his mechanic, were in their office when I got there between shifts. I allowed as how my neighbor had talked to them about me working here, here I was. I could see they were amused by the sight of me right off the get-go. But as sometimes happens with me, I’m a sociable guy and before long we’re talking about everything from deer hunting to vegetable gardening, politics to TV shows. Even though I didn’t even have a TV. They asked me what kind of business I had with college and I said I studied literature. They looked at me blankly. “Books,” I said, “fiction. You know, like novels.” Ted shrugged and Wally shook his head.

I tried again. “Like when you were in English class, those books you read???” Ted laughed. “I never read em,” he said. “Fact, I never read any books.” Wally said, “Me neither.” “None?” I asked, incredulous. “Seriously??”

Well, they admitted they’d read some ‘men’s’ magazines and such, but books, no way. As a recently graduated English major, this was akin to finding myself in some backwash of the Amazon. I tried a few more times, thinking they’re having some fun with the new kid, but pretty soon they had convinced me that no, they were basically illiterate and proud of it. I shook my head. “Okay, I need to bring you boys some reading you might like.”

“When do you want to start?” Ted asked. I thought he meant when did I want to bring them some Tolstoy, but of course, that was how they got their new driver to fill an opening they needed filling. And how my retirement ended before it really got started.

Merry Christmas, everybody! Or, if that seems politically incorrect, happy holidays! Sure don’t want more war on Christmas in these hyper-partisan times, right? Well, it’s been a long year what with the Covid Plague still with us and the tariff inflation but as usual us Daddles have adapted! For the most part this has been a fine year for the Daddle family and as always we like to share our good news with everyone. Wife Linda’s depression has pretty much been manageable with the help of prescription pharmaceuticals. Thank god for the drug companies, eh? She spends a lot of time on the internet, but then, don’t we all? Sometimes I think she’s looking at the same thing for hours on end but I’m just happy she’s found something to do instead of stay in her room crying.

Daughter Brenda is enrolled in the local community college for studies in Business Accounting. She realized her degree in English Renaissance History wasn’t going to pay the rent, even though England seems to be hurtling back to those merry olde times, ha ha. That year flipping burgers at Burger King convinced her to get a trade with something that might pay more than minimum wage. Kids, they never listen to you when you give advice, do they?

Son #1 Jeremiah has slipped a few times following his Narcotics Anonymous program last year but he’s back once more in the basement where we set up an apartment and keep a surveillance camera so we can help him maintain his sobriety. With the Covid Lockdown Linda and I figure this is for his own good in more ways than one. Lately Jerry never leaves the room and no one visits. He doesn’t have much to say at meals with us, but then, he never really did before.

Son # 2 left that religious commune he joined down in Santa Cruz. Brian refused to talk to me after my little meltdown with the ‘guru’ in charge that time we drove down there to see him and the blankety blank geek wouldn’t let us past the guard gate. Apparently, judging by his blogsite, Brian’s a Qanon believer now. I guess you have to believe in something. Nobody said raising kids would be easy, but good god almighty, these boys could try a saint’s patience. Linda says it’s just a phase but that’s what she said about the All Seeing Commune of the Holy Waters too. That worked out swell, didn’t it? Oh, I know, I should be glad Brian found conspiracy theories and not drugs, right?

Me, I’m doing okay. We didn’t travel much this year on account of Covid still a threat and the inflationary costs so it looks like we won’t again this year. Linda is afraid of contaminated hotel rooms and nothing I can say will convince her otherwise. Maybe if she agreed to get her vaccinations, she’d feel more at ease. She says she doesn’t want to infect Jeremiah bringing back the virus from some Motel 6. I say whoa, what about me? But she knows I’m only kidding. I took that horse dewormer so I’m pretty much protected. Jerry, well, the last thing we want Jerry to see is another syringe.

So … hope all you out there are doing as well as us Daddles! Merry Ho Ho!
Love, Linda, Jerry and Skeeter

You readers of the Crab Cracker, our local advertising and literary journal, must surely have felt my discomfort last week when the Cracker issued its apology for offending you readers with a humor column by fellow satirist Tim Jones’s View from the Bleachers. Surely I would be hauled in next and forced to confess my sarcastic crimes. Tim had upset some of you with his reference to the starving kids in Africa who he had planned to help with his Powerball winnings — well, after he’d bought a few Picassos and a jet and some other items most of us would purchase without one iota of thought for the poor or the struggling or the … Okay, better not get me going.

Let me say straight up. Tim is a very funny guy. You meet him, you’ll realize he’s a nice guy too. He didn’t win the Powerball lottery, but you know what, he’d already sponsored a couple of kids in Africa for seven years through World Vision. You or me sponsor any? No? Didn’t think so. I’ve read and re-read his article to see if maybe there was a hint of something dark and sinister lurking under the real point, which is that we lottery fantasists are narcissistic materialists. Maybe, just maybe, this is the rub with the folks who missed Tim’s sarcasm. (Only kidding!)

We live in a world these days that’s mostly lost its sense of humor. Any perceived offense, fire away on Facebook, write a letter to the editor, shoot out a bad review. I’m not completely against political correctness, but for the luvva Bob Hope, not every grievance is punishable by banishment. If it were, we’d put an end to these embarrassing GOP debates. (Only kidding, of course.) I don’t know who’s amputating funny bones in the dead of night, but they’ve gone missing. I checked with my insurance company and discovered to my horror they do not cover funny bone repair or replacement. So blame Obamacare!! (Only kidding, of course.)

But before I end up giving a lame lecture about what makes comedy funny, let me just apologize ahead of time for some of my up-coming so-called humor sketches in case I step on any toes. (Only kidding, trust me….) For those with sensitive elbows maybe just stick to the ‘word of the day’ column a few doors down. Won’t make you laugh, but I’m betting that hasn’t happened in a very long time. (Oh stop, I’m only pulling your leg….)

I got a pile of friends who claim to be envious of my so-called Lifestyle. Get up when I want, work for myself, do what I feel like doing, live off the calendar and my wits and off the beaten path. Who wouldn’t like that? Unless we factor in the poverty, the hand-to-mouth, the lack of pensions or retirement. There’s a reason hippies became extinct and it has nothing to do with an asteroid slamming Earth.

As the mizzus will gladly attest, I took this road — this choice? — because I don’t play well with others. And certainly not managers, supervisors or most any other bosses. I didn’t like the city. I didn’t like most jobs. Okay, all jobs, any jobs. And since poverty never scared me, the Path of Least Resistance led to here, a place remote and cheap, and not surprisingly, a backwash without much opportunity for employment.

Perfect! All I had to do was learn a few skills. Carpentry, plumbing, electrical, truck repair, subsistence living. Education — it never really ends. Something they neglect to teach most of us in school. The School of Hard Knocks doesn’t need a post-graduate program. Tuition’s not exactly free, but it’s reasonable.

Folks who claim to be envious of my lifestyle really aren’t. They didn’t have the appropriate skill sets. If they did, retirement would be easy for them, a hippie vibe with a fat income guaranteed. Who could ask for more? But … like I always say, it takes more than a little while to learn bohemianism. And if you’ve spent most of your life paying for insurance policies to protect yourself from the vagaries of existence, chances are it’s too late to become a latter day beatnik. Don’t feel bad, you’re probably the Lucky Ones.

The county just got the results in for their survey locating the homeless on Camano. Turns out they didn’t find any. None. Zero. Zilch. I guess they went from gate to gate in the gated communities, maybe looked behind the forsythia, then moved on. Nobody came down to the South End, that’s for sure.

Turns out Island County sent teams into the hinterlands to search out the homeless. Well, except not Camano Island. The housing resource coordinator was quoted in the Gazette, “We just didn’t have the time. But next year we hope to get more of a head start.” They did manage to send out some fliers on the transit buses asking the homeless, if they were indeed out there, if they would respond. No responses were forthcoming. The coordinator speculated that maybe the homeless just didn’t want to be identified as the homeless. You know, IF there were any homeless.

I suppose this could be a new paradigm for social services in America if Washington DC gets wind of this. Poverty? Post some placards on telephones asking the poor if they’re poor. Call us, we want to help. You a veteran not getting medical assistance? We put some fliers on the buses in your town. You maybe didn’t see them? You out of work, chronically unemployed? We posted a notice on Facebook. Maybe you need to buy a computer, get some DSL service, reach out to us. We want to help….

I ran a poll myself this week. Posted a notice on my blogsite asking anyone in county government if they were intelligent enough to be holding office. If so, please call in to southendbrainresearch.com and answer the brief questionnaire. Take about half a minute, just want to do a head count of the bright ones…. Surprisingly, nobody responded. All I can say, if I can use the county’s own methodology, there’s no intelligence over there in Whidbey Island government. Course, maybe they’re embarrassed to identify themselves as smart. Or they’re just being modest.

Next year we’ll maybe have some time to organize IQ search parties. This year we were just a little too busy. In the meantime hopefully all the homeless over here will find decent housing. You know, the folks who don’t exist here in paradise.

Hank ‘the Tank’ Amundsen is standing up next to his barstool taking a swing for the outfield wall. “My gawd,’ he was gushing, “my gawd, it was something to see. That kid of mine is going to the majors, you guyz heard it first.” Pete, two stools down, sipped affably at his pint of IPA and said quietly, “I think you told us this last week, Tank.” Jerry nodded from a table full of empty pints he and the Flatheads had killed during the first hour of happy hour, ready for the second. “I believe Pete’s correct, Tank, but he forgot to mention the week before and last month and I think, check me on this Pete, I think you told us Jimmy was going Pro last year.”

“Aw, guys, I’m just a proud papa, is all. You can’t blame me, the kid is great. You can see it in his swing he’s got plenty of homers coming up. Practically got a contract signed. The scouts probably already got eyes trained on him.”

Little Jimmy, if he declared eligibility at this point, would never graduate Middle School. Tank has been sending him to camps, buying gear, tossing balls, all the stuff a Tiger Woods training dad would do since the kid was two and a half. If Jimmy had hoped for a normal childhood of bikes and X-box, it wasn’t going to happen. If Tank wasn’t hauling him and his bats, gloves and balls to tournaments and camps, he was out back of his shack where he’d set up a batting cage, firing curve balls to the poor kid, yelling at him when he whiffed, hollering in joy when he blasted one into the nettles past the swingset that Jimmy never got to use. His sister, pretty much ignored by Tank, got the swing pretty much to herself.

I don’t know what happens to all the Jimmys whose alpha dads drove them to be the best soccer player, baseball star, football hero or basketball idol, whose only dream was to go pro, make the majors, play ten years or less, then retire wealthy as Michael Jordan. I suspect they become sad, depressed, broken adults. Maybe they put their kids through the same nightmare gauntlet.

I had a buddy in high school who won state champ in swimming. When I saw him after we’d trudged off to different colleges, I asked him if he was still training for the Olympics. “I quit,” he said. When I asked why, he answered, “I spent half my life in a chlorine pool, before school, after school. All so I could compete in the Olympics, probably never make it, then wonder all my damn life why I didn’t do something else. I’m going to do something else.”

I suspect there are mostly losers out there. If we taught em to love the game, if we taught em to enjoy their teammates, if we taught em that sports were fun more than a path to riches, maybe we’d have a lot more winners. Jimmy, I suspect, isn’t going to be a winner. And his dad is going to take it a lot harder than Jimmy.

I spend a lot of time behind the wheel of a grocery shopping cart. Since I don’t own a cellphone to check with the mizzus what size or brand of mayo or dressing she prefers this particular afternoon or to chat it up with some friend or relative to while away the lonely hours on Aisle 6, I find my entertainment studying the purchasing patterns of my fellow South End shoppers.

I was behind Ginny Sprague this morning. Ginny’s a mom of 3, 4 if you count her husband Morty who’s been unemployed since before the Great Recession. Her cart was a veritable shrine to General Mills, Frito-Lay and Coca-Cola. Now, I grew up on morning cereal, but I was a teenager before Kelloggs and their corporate adulterers began to hook us kids on Count Chocula or Cap’n Crunch with mostly sugar additives. That’s why we have moms, I figure, but Ginny either got addicted too or else the kids rule the trailer at mealtimes. Box pizzas, candy bars, diet Coke, canned Spaghetti-O’s, white bread, processed meat. Maybe her root cellar is still stocked with vegetables and fruit which would explain their absence in the cart, but … I’m betting the children and Morty hate broccoli and apples.

Her pile of groceries wasn’t a lot different than half the shoppers bumper to bumper at check-out, I know. We’re the wealthiest folks on earth and we eat like it’s Halloween every day. Ginny’s kids are little blubberballs at age 7,8 and 10. Ginny’s no toothpick herself and yeah, I know, it’s none of my damn business. I’ll be dead of malnutrition before they glut the health care system with diabetes and poor circulation and hopeless obesity. Not my problem, I spoze, but when I hear Ralph next door bitching about the ‘nanny state’ intruding on his freedom when schools serve nutritious food instead of a slice of pizza and a Coke, I think, hey, I’m paying for their lunch with my taxes too.

But arguing with Ralph is a proven form of masochism. I just nod in agreement. “Let them eat cake, Ralph,” I say. “And wash it down with a supersize soda.” Ralph’s just glad we can finally agree on something.

Down here in the start-up labs of the South End we’ve been printing DNA. Got ourselves some sterile vats full of 4 major amino acid groups, hooked em up to a 3-D printer, ran a USB port to a laptop and went to work experimenting with interesting combinations. Make our own stem cells with unusual variations of chromosomes, another year or two, you’ll see Wal-Mart offering kits for the kids. Make your own sibling! Puppy in a test tube! Fun for the whole family!

Course we’re still working out the bugs, literally sometimes. South Endomex Technologies made a fast mutating paramecium that ran rampant in the dumpster behind their lab a couple months ago. Two or three cats lost more than their allotted 9 lives before Billy Brandon, the night manager, noticed clumps of matted fur behind the building and alerted Frank, South Endomex’s project manager next morning. “Looked like they’d been turned inside out and twisted,” he whispered before giving notice.

Kind of a wake-up call, I guess. They double bag unwanted recombinants now, no point taking unnecessary chances. Not that anyone’s very worried. I mean, what are the odds of escaped life forms surviving in the hostile environment of the nettled South End? Humans barely eke out an existence, what chance does an unstable pile of amino acids have?

Still, always good to err on the side of caution even if the government hasn’t gotten around to clamping down on the profit motive with overly burdensome regulations.     Yet….     Which only makes us all that more inventive. Time, after all, is not on our side. But judging by the influx of venture capital, the potential is nearly unlimited. Forget Silicon Valley. This here is the Next Big Thing. This is the new Garden of Eden, a chance to get it right this time. You want an apple, Adam? Tart or sweet? Red or yellow? With or without seeds? Just punch a program, Big Fella, no need to disobey orders from On High. But … maybe keep an eye out for any odd looking worms. Still got some flies in the ointment….

We just bought a new car. Our meager attempt to prime the economic pump. I’d list off all the things this vehicle is capable of doing, from self-activating braking system to rear view camera, but it would be easier to list what it doesn’t do. You can’t crank down the windows. And without a computer, good luck diagnosing anything past a burned out light bulb. It doesn’t fly — at least I haven’t found the button that switches into Aero Mode — but essentially it’s a Jetson ride, mostly computer driven, sensor controlled and definitely futuristic.

And yeah, it cost what my first house cost. $24,000. That house was a used ghetto hacienda, built about 50 years before I won it bidding in a sealed auction offered by HUD. Course back then I was buying cars for 2 or 3 hundred bucks and yeah, the windows cranked up and down, although some didn’t work at all. Maybe this a story about inflation or maybe upward mobility or even, I hate to believe it, conspicuous consumption, I’m not sure. But it definitely is one about the American Dream of my days. A house, a car, a family with 2.3 kids. A job, a career, a one wage-earner family.

Mostly gone now, replaced by two wage-earners who make less than Ward Cleaver. The Beaver is hooked on Game Boy, Wally’s a heroine addict and June has become the primary breadwinner now that Ward has been laid off. They’re mortgaged to the hilt, retirement is postponed indefinitely now. I suspect they voted for Trump first go-round, figuring what did they have to lose?

Second go-round, I’m betting they did again. They still got plenty to lose. Maybe the American Dream was diminished before but now it seems like it’s on life support.

My new car has self-activating brakes when I’m headed into peril. America apparently doesn’t. Maybe too many of us are like this old fool, watching the rear view and not the detour ahead. I suspect when we get where we’re going, the levy’s gonna be dry.