The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Every year the editorial staff of the Crab Cracker comes to me and asks why don’t we run a South End Man and Woman of the Year? Mary Jo Permkowski begs them to run that contest so she can win South End Businesswoman of the Year for her Pedicure Salon, Mo-Toe Mojo. She figures she’s practically the only business left on the South End, a virtual shoe-in, she thinks, assuming South End Greenworks, Two Toke Tom’s semi-legal cannabis dispensary isn’t considered a legitimate candidate. Mary Jo’s kidding herself — Two Toke probably would win Man AND Business of the Year both.

I tell them let Stanwoodopolis run their little contest. High School’s over down here. We don’t elect Prom King and Queen — none of us were the captain of the football team or the most sexually active cheerleader. We know how the Game is rigged. And not just Yokel of the Year —- I mean the Big Game. Why do you think we live down here? To win popularity contests? Or to escape em …?

Oh, I suppose we could run our own easy enough. Best Moonshiner. Best Gyppo. Best Nettle Farmer. Best Hydroponic Cannabis Cultivator. Best Trailer Court. Best Old Hippie. Best Dandelion Show Garden. Best Poacher. Best Meth Lab. Best Rehabbed Felon. Best E-Bay saleswoman. Best Illegal Crabber. Best Friend of Colton Harris Moore. Best Glass Artist Who Plays Banjo and Writes Articles for the Crab Cracker.

But NO! we’re not gonna stoop to that. If all we wanted were a pack of sycophantic friends to vote us their favorite yokel or their best underground business, we’d sign up for Facebook and get all our neighbors to “Like” us. Probably mostly end up with hits from the FBI or the IRS anyway. No sir, let the popularity voting go on without us another year. We may not be the cutest or the most athletic or the smartest or the friendliest, we may not have a South End Fan Club or 2 zillion connections on Linked-In, we may not get invited to those catered North End soirees for the rich and famous winners of last year’s People of the Year, but we’ll just struggle on. And Betty Jo — you didn’t have an atheist’s prayer against Two Toke anyway, I don’t care how promiscuous you are.

Big Walter had a black plague mask with white words printed on it that said This Mask Is As Worthless As My Government. He had it pulled down so it only covered his mouth and not his nose, his idea of a personal protest. He and the Trump Boosters were sitting in the corner of the South End Marina’s Pilot Lounge, lately Revolution Central for the hotheads who come to congregate after a hard day of driving their 4×4’s up and down the island with their political signs and their semi-automatics in full view, no doubt a reminder to the rest of us commies that the day was coming when they would exercise their 2nd amendment rights if we won the election.

Little Jimmy was wondering loudly if maybe they should go down Tuesday and guard the polling station against ‘outside agitators’. Fairlane Fred was on his 3rd White Russian, an irony that apparently escaped his attention when he opined that the ‘Russkies’ were definitely trying to put their ‘finger on the scale’ for Biden and it might be time for an ‘intervention’ down at the polls. He’d heard on social media they would be there in force to coerce the voters.

“Hell yes they’ll try to intimidate the sheep!” Big Walter shouted as he tore off his mask, casting a wary eye toward Leonard, the new weekend bartender who only shook his head slightly and turned to a customer down the bar. That customer would be me. Two Toke sat an extra stool away, social distance in this Year of the Plague. “We’ll take some personnel down there and make sure things are on the up and up,” Walt declared.

“I’m in, Walt, count me in!” Little Jimmy declared resolutely. Fred and Jerry volunteered too. Two Toke chuckled. “Looks like we got ourselves an army in search of a war.”

Walter scowled and said if Two Toke Tom wanted a war, he’d gladly give him one. “My point exactly, Walter,” TT said and laughed.

Little Jimmy wanted to know what time they should show up and Fred said when the damn polling station opens up and Jerry asked where was the damn polling station anyway. This cracked Two Toke up. “Leonard,” he said, “give these vigilantes directions to the war, they’re short a GPS.” Leonard, despite being new to the job, stayed diplomatically out of this, just kept drying beer pints with a towel and putting them on the rack below the bar.

“That’s right, go ahead and laugh, Bernie Boy,” Walter growled, his mask on the table, definitely worthless now. “But when America turns socialist, you won’t be smiling anymore and that, my leftist friend, is a fact.”

“Walt, you wouldn’t know a fact if it ran you over with your own truck. But hey, I’m totally okay with you boys patrolling the polling station. Really, I am,” Tom said amiably. “ More power to you, more power to the people. I’d even go with you. You know, if I had a gun, but being a peacenik and all, I don’t. “

“Sure you would, Tom, sure you would,” Big Walter said, shaking his head sadly.

“I would, Walt, sure as you believe in facts, I would. Tell me what time to show up, maybe I’ll join the militia.”

“Leonard,” I said, “give these patriots a round on me. And Thomas here too. I think we’ve found some unity at last in these divided times.” And so, a few days before the election, we all drank a good will toast to an honest vote, long live the queen. Two Toke and I left together and neither of us told the boys our state was strictly mail-in ballots, no more polling stations to guard.

The other day I was clearing brush down by the road when I heard horns honking and engines revving, a cacophony audible from half a mile away. I put down my sickle and waited to see what parade was going to pass by me on its way to the head of the island. Half a minute later a convoy of trucks proceeded past me at half the speed limit, TRUMP 2020 signs propped up in the pickup beds, American flags half tattered from the wind shear snapping in the wind, horns blaring, lights on emergency blinkers. At the head of the line was Big Walter dressed in military camo, MAGA hat worn proudly, arm out the rolled down window, an assault rifle in the gunrack behind him. When he saw me standing by the side of the road, he gave me a big thumbs up and yelled, ‘Resistance is futile, Skeeter!!’

Rather than yell something obscene back over the road roar, I just stood at attention and gave him a salute. Okay, one finger only. Big Walter thinks he’s the Commandant of the South End Militia these days, the patriot who’ll guard the county’s ballot drop box against possible tampering, the guerilla warrior who’ll take on the Antifa when they turn up after Trump’s victory to protest what they’ll claim is a bogus election, the gunslinging take-no-prisoners vigilante who’ll guarantee liberty for the white males of the country who he claims are under siege and discriminated against.

Behind his lead vehicle came a ragtag assortment of Walter’s militia. Fat Phil and Little Jimmy rode together in a Ford 250 jacked higher than the gigantic tires looking like an escapee from a monster truck show. Behind them came a couple of half tons, one dump truck, a WW Two jeep, two flatbeds, three or four vintage cars and trucks and oddly, taking up the rear, Two Toke with his battered Volkswagen van circa 1966, peace signs plastered all over it and a Grateful Dead insignia hand painted on the front . Behind him were the half dozen poor folks who were stuck in the traffic jam, probably embarrassed to be part of the parade. Or maybe not.

Two Toke grinned happily, shot me the peace sign and I just shook my head as he rolled past in that micro bus like an acid flashback to the Viet Nam protests of our political youth. Here we are again, I thought, back where we started, nothing much changed. I picked up my sickle and went back to slashing sticker bushes and blackberries. By spring they’d be grown back and I’d be at it again.

One week to go until the referendum on our current Leader. Post-covid, he’s on the campaign trail asking his troops to come out and guard the polling stations, cautioning that the mail-in ballots will be fraudulent, declaring that no votes should be counted after midnight on the day of the election despite many states having laws that declare ballots will be counted later if they meet the postmark. The winds of change are in the air, fragrant as a smoldering leaf mulch fire.

I talked to my neighbor whose mother died last night in Wausau, Wisconsin. The covid spike there in that fair city is 50% of those tested are covid positive. The outbreak started, oddly enough, when the President came there and his troops, all drunk on the Kool-aid belief of the virus as a left wing media hoax, stood shoulder to shoulder in Trumpstep solidarity. The GOP legislators who are running close elections are turning up these days with masks on, stepping a political distance away from the SuperSpreader himself, a sure sign that his coat tails aren’t going to help but instead pull them down too.

Polls are predicting a possible massacre. To which the Republicans counter that the polls were wrong last time. They weren’t wrong the last mid-term and they won’t be wrong this next time either. Key states lined up for Mr. T by 77,000 votes and the electoral college fell his way. You want to bet they’ll fall that way this time, call my bookie, I’m happy to give you odds. 538, the Nate Silver polling algorithm, gives the odds at 88% that Biden will beat this guy like a recalcitrant mule. 538 puts the bet on the Senate at 74% the Democrats will take over.

I’m ordinarily not one who thinks the government should be completely in the hands of one party. But after the last four years of incompetence, lies, racism, xenophobia, narcissism, corruption and impeachable behavior glossed over by his sycophantic minions, well, I’m ready for some adults to run the show for awhile and hopefully not get too power crazed.

The writing’s on the White House wall. The country knows this Covid response was a stupid senseless mess and they will vote accordingly. Trump himself sees what’s coming. Check and mate. Time, he figures, to tip over the checkerboard. If he’s ahead at midnight Nov. 3rd, well sir, that’s a victory. The rest he’ll fight out in the Supreme Court. And you wondered why the Barrett woman was rammed through in record time ….

If you’re like me, and God help you if you are, you’re having trouble keeping track of what day of the week it is. Even worse, what month. Time sometimes stands still, sometimes races ahead, and worse, occasionally slips backwards. This is the sixth or seventh month of the Covid panic, outbreaks on the rise once again here and worldwide. You probably track the statistics the way you track the election polls, feverishly and incessantly. You pray to your gods that this epidemic will wane, that the election will be over, that a vaccine will be discovered that will give immunity to both.

I make one trip a week to the grocery store to stock up on food and reality suppressors. Every couple weeks I fill up the truck’s gas tank. In a real emergency I’ll have to haul into a hardware store to buy a replacement toilet for the one that broke recently, no doubt overworked by stressful bowel syndrome brought on by too much internet news. Other than that we’re sequestered here on the partisan South End, caged animals walking the trails of our self-imposed prison, wondering when Normality will return. Lately we think never.

Rumors trickle into our little bubble. A naked dead man washed up on shore a few miles north of us. Antifa? A Covid victim? Another suicide by someone who opted out of quarantine? Wildfires are burning up across the freeway. Or was it in Colorado? Fires seem to be engulfing half the west. Some say global warming, some say leftist guerillas. All information coming in is suspect now. Iranian disinformation and Chinese hackers, one of our neighbors claimed. Personally, I think he’s a Russian plant. His lights stay on late into the night. What’s he up to that late at night? Course, maybe he thinks the same thing of me. But we know, don’t we?, that I can’t even speak Russian much less work for the KGB since I am workaphobic.

The election is supposed to happen in a week. Only the gullible think this will occur. Sure, votes will be cast, media will report delays, ballots will be rejected, speculation of tampering will be rampant. The election will pass, maybe no winner declared, martial law declared, plague masks declared illegal to wear, schools reopened or closed or reopened again. A new election will be called, the last election voided, the President will speak on Fox News to say we’ve turned the corner, to declare victory over Covid, to promise a vaccine before the next election if there ever is one.

We have, he will say, nothing to fear but fear itself. He will declare that he is the first to say this. He insists that he’s the first to say this, that he said it long ago but the fake news won’t cover brilliant quotes of his. He will tell you what you have to be afraid of. Plenty, he’ll say. Suburban takeovers, racist riots, plague riddled immigrants, our own FBI, the Chinese, the liberals, even his own Republicans. Trust him, he’ll say, he’s got this. He’s got the best team. He’s got a Plan and when we’re ready, he’ll show it to us. We’re not ready yet. Maybe in a few more months.

But … what month is it now?

Back in the days when we wrenched on our cars — NOT for the love of vintage automobiles, but because we were too poor to have someone else repair them — we had just come back from the Rez junkyard where we’d pulled an automatic tranny out of another ’64 Impala half sunk in the swamps. Muddy nasty work, but you do what has to be done…. By late afternoon we had that transmission cleaned off and bolted onto our own Chevy up by the barn, and now the moment of truth had arrived so we fired up the Impala, ignored the bucket of parts with the ‘extra’ bolts and nuts and do-hickeys, dropped it off its jacks and headed up the road.

For the first mile we drove slow, feeling for sloppy shifts, listening for odd noises. Two miles up we hit 50 mph and now terrible noises rose through the floorboards so we pulled over and crawled underneath. Sure enough, a few bolts were missing where the tranny connected to the bellhousing, no doubt those ‘extra’ parts back in the bucket by the barn. We cursed, we spit, we finally laughed at our stupidity, stuck our thumbs out and waited for a ride.

Joe Frittitelli swerved to the shoulder in his big Exxon Valdez of a cruiser, said hop in, boyz, and we squeezed between Joe and his girlfriend, all four of us in the front seat the spaciousness of a Montana wheatfield. A mile later Joe had to urinate ‘like a racehorse’ and since the driver’s door was no longer functional, all of us slid out the passenger side and waited while Seabiscuit relieved himself, then we all rolled back in across seas of amber grain. He dropped us on the roadside by our place, then sped off in a purple haze of half burnt oil.

We retrieved the lost bolts, hitched back to the crippled Impala, installed them and an hour later we were back at the shack, Jack, celebrating with some cold ones. A month later I’m working my job as weekend graveyard orderly down at the Everett Pain Motel and run into Joe at 3 AM wandering the desolate hallways. “What’s up, Joe?” I asked.

Joe, it seems, had been cleaning his gun late that night, pulled the trigger and lo and behold, the unanticipated bullet in the chamber was now embedded in his girlfriend’s brain. I had just taken her to the Cat Scan but hadn’t recognized her. She was comatose but alive. It was, needless to say, a long night. The police were convinced he’d shot her intentionally. I was convinced he hadn’t. If he had, he deserved an Academy Award.

She stayed up in ICU on life support for two months. Alive, I guess, but not really. Last we heard they moved her to a facility that cared for the comatose. Joe was never charged. He got cancer and moved away, where, we heard, he died. And …. not to sound too cold hearted or unsympathetic to the victims here, our Impala died too. The tranny was no good and we didn’t want to waste time or money on another bad one. I don’t think we wanted to meet any more neighbors either. Maybe it wasn’t so much we were dirt poor back then — as much as life seemed just way too cheap.

Here’s a fun statistic you might like to share on your twitter account, Facebook page or just save for around the Thanksgiving dinner table with the family. Over half of Trump supporters believe the Qanon claim that the Democrats are running a pedophilia ring. You read every day where some pervert is arrested and his computer confiscated when it’s discovered he’s downloading child porn. What you didn’t know is that kiddie porn probably came from the Democratic Party, videos no doubt made with all the children they’ve kidnapped and locked into pizza parlor basements around the country. Insidious? Holy Uncle Joe, Batman, I’ll say insidious.!! And you were worried about the Biden Mafioso Crime Family….

Mr. T himself says he knows nothing, NOTHING, about Qanon, nothing, NOTHING, about pedophile rings run by Sleepy Joe. Sure, he retweets this stuff but only for amusement of the masses, they can decide on their veracity themselves. The fact that it comes directly from the President of the United States surely wouldn’t influence their ability to differentiate fact from insane fantasy. Not one little bit.

This is what 4 years of an emperor with no clothes can bring, an electorate spoonfed bullshit that thinks the Democratic Party can get away with corralling kids and forcing them to do god only knows what unthinkable acts. Welcome to Trump’s America. A dark hole of a place where perversion lurks behind every schoolyard and nursery. A place where a cabal of political operatives steal the nation’s children and enslave them for their evil purposes. A milk industry that hides the missing children from the public, no doubt co-criminals with the Democrats. This is what America has become.

Course, to be fair, we might ask the question why, if Trump and his followers know about this, why on earth do they allow it to go on?? Where is that evil fighter Bill Barr when we really need him? Where are the Republican Senators who allow this to continue unabated in their own states? Where are the people of Good?

I don’t know the answer to any of this. I surely do not. But I know this: I’m really glad I’m not a kid.

South End society runs the gamut these days from Dot.com millionaires to meth-heads. You live down here in the tonier backwashes, you acquire a necessary degree of egalitarianism. That, or you move into the Gated Communities, rig up elaborate security systems and hope the unwashed masses don’t mistake the moat around your castle as a fancy hot tub.

One of our neighbors who went by the moniker of ‘Dawg’ married a woman south of me and immediately added 4 stepkids to his care. His ex was living over the mountains with two of his other kids and so, in the spirit of misguided parenthood, Dawg and his old lady hired an attorney to regain custody of those poor deprived children being raised by a single mom who’d taken up with an ex-con and worse, one on drugs. Dawg and his mizzus were also on drugs, drank heavily, but they had decided their parental skills would serve the children best.

And so they finally convinced a judge and child services to return the two teenagers to the stability and warmth of a South End home, to be raised by paragons of virtue and join the family circle. A year later Dawg and the mizzus split the sheets after she’d shacked up with an alcoholic loser on the north end and left him with 4 juvenile delinquent stepkids and his own 2 genetic ones. In the spirit of sacrifice and after considerable deliberation with myself and Jack Daniels, Dawg moved out too.

Lest you think Dawg was heartless, it should be stated he came down once a week to fill the fridge and ‘check on things’. “I just can’t be here all the damn time,” he told me. “And anyway, those kids of hers (meaning the mizzus’) hate my guts.”

The neighbors grew concerned when the parties lasted deep into the night, cars honked horns and tore out at 2 AM and numerous fights were continually breaking out. Chickens, dogs, cats, meth dealers and other animals came and went in the house whose doors were wide open day and night. The floors were urine and feces stained and the place reeked like a Texas porta-potty in August. Dawg told me his daughter — the one he’d ‘rescued’ from an abusive life — was now pregnant. She was 15, maybe 16. When she came, she was a bright and inquisitive kid. Now she could look forward to teenage motherhood.

There’s plenty of guilt to go around and I have some myself for not going to the police or child protection services or even calling some church. My mother used to tell us kids, “It takes all kinds to make a world.” And when we got to be smartass teenagers, we’d reply, “Right, Mom, that’s why it’s all screwed up.”

Dawg got fired awhile back from his job of 25 years. He ended up marrying his ex, the very same woman whose kids he took and ruined. It only lasted a year or so, then she hooked up with a biker from Seattle. I ran into him the other day. Same old Dawg. Like he always said when he lived down here: No brains, no headaches. Dawg hasn’t got either.

Three weeks to go, Lord, three long weeks until the incessant ads stop, the mudslinging ends, the election signs come down and we all resume our regular broadcasting. With any luck we’ll put the Trump Show into reruns and wait for the Fox News winter line-up featuring the evening variety program Dancing with Donald. Whatever the outcome of this interminable election, the man won’t be going away, not for a long long time. He’s basically a herpes virus, lurking in your spinal column, just waiting for the right opportunity. Cue the music: ‘you’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.’ Actually, the song IS about him.

Me, I’m ready for a break from Mr. T. Four years has worn me down. If Covid takes away taste and smell, Mighty Mouth has destroyed my sense of humor. My funny bone has atrophied and I may have forgotten how to laugh, permanently if this guy gets another term of office. In the middle of a pandemic, with protests going on for months and riots breaking out continually, with kids locked up at home with parents who can’t afford child care, with the economy in smoking ruins for the poor, maybe it’s time for someone who wants to unite the country in common cause, not poke a stick in half the nation’s eyes. A little optimism instead of incessant pessimism might be a welcome relief. I know I’m sick and tired of the constant vitriol, the finger pointing, the shaming and the blaming. How about a plan of action? How about tackling some problems? How about helping those who need help? How about confronting this Covid outbreak with something more substantial than rah rah, hurray for me, what a job I’ve done, look at how I saved probably 2 million lives? Send this Cat 5 hurricane back to Mar a Lago where they know how to handle disasters. Board up, hunker down and hope the damage is manageable when the storm subsides. Then go to work rebuilding what was torn down.

Maybe you watched the ‘town meeting’ last week, the one he arranged with NBC after refusing to debate Biden virtually after he’d contracted Covid. If so, you got the full monty, the angry guy, the leader who retweets conspiracies theories and then denies knowing anything about them, just sending them out to his twitter followers and they can decide for themselves. The moderator said, c’mon, Mr. T, you’re the President, not somebody’s crazy uncle. How wrong she was. He’s everyone’s crazy uncle.

I was talking with my neighbor today. He drives milk truck. Home delivery. Glass bottles. Old school. It’s like having a time warp drifting around in the back yard. I’m expecting the Iceman soon on the other side of me. Big tongs dropping blocks in my 1910 icebox that sits on the porch for decoration now, you know, the present, before the century turned back. Why not? Might be time to save on the electric bill running that old Frigidaire we got back in the future.

The milkman was telling me how he’d gone to Minnesota to go ice fishing. 20 below zero. Couple feet of snow. Half a mile out on some lake near the Arctic Circle above Minneapolis. Heaven on earth. I asked what YOU would: why? He’s a dedicated fisherman and he just wanted to experience it, he said. Part of his Bucket List. I was afraid to ask what else was on that list.

I went ice fishing once. 1966. Northern Wisconsin. 10 below. Nice wind freshening up the crusty snow. My brother and I trekked out like deranged Zhivagos across a frozen desolate God-abandoned expanse, lugging an ice auger, some ice fishing ‘jigs’ and a little bait. We drilled a 2 foot hole through the ice, slapping ourselves to keep warm, then set the jigs to pop up when some sluggish fish floated by in a state of half-hibernation and got a sudden appetite. We stood there, two primitive people hunting food. The wind swept snow around our feet and the water in our fishing hole began to close up with slush. We didn’t talk much. The jig didn’t move. Time itself was freezing up.

I looked at my brother. He looked miserable. He looked at me. I know what I looked like. Without a word, we pulled our lines up, packed up the jigs not very carefully, grabbed the auger, our pride, our fishing fantasies and trudged back to shore, half frozen. Let’s just say — Ice Fishing would never have to be on our Bucket List later in life.

I asked my milkman how HE liked it. “Just wanted to experience it,” he said. “And Minnesota too, in the winter. I’ve heard about it. “ “You catch anything?” I asked. “Naw, just a small walleye. Twice, I think, same fish.” “Probably the one we didn’t catch,” I mumbled.

The rest of you anglers, give that poor walleye time to grow before you trek across the tundras in search of Antarctic fish trophies. They grow slow under the ice.