The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/audio-why-we-throw-a-new-years-bash5.mp3[/podcast]audio — why we throw a new years bash

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For the past 25 years or so the mizzus and me throw a big New Year’s Party here on the South End, partly so we don’t get to know the sheriff’s deputies any better than we do now, which is what we tell the neighbors, but the real reason is a bit more shrouded in the mists of lost memories.  I got a call today from Brent, an old friend now in Alaska,  and it triggered a couple of neurons into firing spasmodically  once more and voila, I was back in, oh, 1985 down at the shack with just a few of us struggling mightily to make it to midnight so we could toast the new year and pass out in our bunks.
    My brother was here with his wife and we had Brent and Liz visiting from Portland.   My brother is what you’d call a spark plug for party stuff.  Meaning, when conversations lag, he springs into instant action.  ‘Let’s go around the room,’ he says, ‘and tell what the best day of the year was for each of us.’  So Brent goes first and he relates a warm summer day when he and his collie were at the park and the sun was shining and the Frisbees were sailing and it was just a golden day,  a boy and his pooch, fetching the Frisbee.  Not maybe what my brother had in mind, I bet, but just a hippie dippy zen day that stood out for Brent more than some birthday or Christmas or the day he got a raise or the usual dopey stuff  we trot out when you play Name Your Best Day.
    I don’t remember what my favorite day was.  I don’t remember Karen’s or my brother’s or Judy,my brother’s wife’s, favorite day.  But I remember Liz’s turn, Brent’s girlfriend who I’d know a long time.  A real long time.  A way too long a time.   And as the clock ticked glacially toward 1986, gears needing oil, glasses waiting for that toast and then goodnight everybody, my brother sez, ‘Okay, Liz, what was your favorite day?’  And to this day I can remember Liz turning to Brent who was rubbing his collie’s head, probably still warm in his remembrance of a summer day in the park, and the clock’s hands stopping forever, the wood stove throwing a heat nothing like what Liz was focusing on poor Brent with a laser look that would burn through titanium like it was cheap plastic, and our glasses with champagne broke in the sudden stillness before she said, ‘My favorite day …. (and the ‘my’ was a small caliber bullet)  My favorite day was the day we got back together, Brent.’
    Maybe you’ve had a New Year’s ‘Party’ like that.  The room emptying of air and sound and mirth, as if a stopper had been pulled from the tub of our happiness and no matter how hard you try, and Brent desperately tried, that stopper won’t go back in and all the merriment drains out by your feet and deep down in your cold curling guts you know, you know absolutely this is not the way you wanted to ring in the next year.  You know what they mean by ill-omened now and all the months to come you will dread the next New Years’ Eve the way you would dread death itself.   And of course Liz and Brent broke up and Brent moved to the furthest corner of the earth and my brother admitted maybe that wasn’t the best holiday icebreaker of all time and we decided either to forsake New Year’s altogether or bring so many people in we couldn’t possibly go around the room and play parlor games like Stab Your Lover.
    And that is how the South End got its gala New Year’s Extravaganza Potluck and BYOB Party.  And of course, you’re invited!  Unless you got some serious issues with your girlfriend or boyfriend, lover or husband, wife or mistress.  Then I think you should get a new parlor game for you and a few select friends.  Happy New Year anyway.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/audio-thanks-but-well-pass-on-the-new-years-resolutions-this-year.mp3[/podcast]audio — thanks, but we’ll pass on the new years resolutions this year

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 Some of the boys down here on the South End were deep into a night of nog over at the Tyee Store and Saloon when the subject of New Year’s Resolutions reared its ugly head.  We’d pretty much solved most of the burning issues of the day that Congress can’t or won’t address, and with world peace close at hand and a solution for global economic recovery looming in our fevered LED’s, we naturally turned to self-improvement, the final obstacle to Nirvana.

     Self-improvement, in case you’ve never met a dyed-in-the-alpaca-wool South Ender, isn’t high on his Honey-Do List.  If it’s on the list at all…..  I’m not saying we don’t think we could use some polishing, but all those so-called vices other folks resolve every January One to curb or cut back on or eradicate completely, are those very traits we hold in high esteem.  We sure aren’t in any hurry to canonize ourselves.  We aren’t aiming for perfection.  Okay, maybe we could stand a bit of sprucing up, but we all know what a slippery slope that is.  Mabana Mike quit the bottle for 13 weeks two New Years ago and by the 3rd week he was an insufferable convert not only to Sobriety but worse, Piety.  Every day was like an AA meeting with Mike and he might as well have started his own church, passed out nicotine patches and offered  up 3 more cups of decaf coffee to the gods of abstinence.

     No, we decided long ago it’s better to accept our little blemishes and move on the best we can.  You live in a Shangri-La-La like we do, you don’t want many more monks claiming blissful enlightenment.  Next thing you know hordes of tourists seeking Truth, Wisdom and the South End Way will be clogging our backwash blacktop.  Plus, Tyee Store isn’t legally zoned for monasteries or temples.  We’ll probably just save everyone the grief and skip the resolutions again this New Year.  Good luck, though, to the rest of you….

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/audio-remembering-the-less-fortunate.mp3[/podcast]audio — remembering the less fortunate

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Christmas was always a Big Deal in our family.  Store bought tree.  Tons of aluminum icicle  stuff that we had to pick off bit by crinkly bit and put away for next year.  A mile of colored lights.  Thousands of ornaments.  Plenty of presents.  Enough  for a whole village somewhere in a 3rd world country.       Us kids wouldn’t sleep much the night before.  And before dawn we’d be prowling the tree, shaking packages, going half crazy til the folks finally got up.  Oh man, Christmas was Something.  Like a birthday and Thanksgiving  and 4th of July all thrown together in one granddaddy of a day.

     We’d have a giant dinner later.  A turkey the size of a pterodactyl.  A table jammed with stuff.  We could’ve fed all of Stanwood and still had leftovers.  The old man always started it off with something HIS mother said every year.  He’d look over an acre of food, rivers of gravy, mountains of dressing, pies in the distance, presents strewn from here to the back 40,  and we’d all get quiet and then he’d say what we always knew was coming:  he’d say:  I wonder what the poor folks are doing today?

     Sorta took the wind right out of our sails, that’s for sure.  Gave us pause….   And then we’d hoist a shovel and commence to eating.  So while we’re all celebrating, I think it’s important to think about the rest of the world who aren’t as blessed as us on the South End.  You know, Smokey Point.  Say a prayer for them too and wish for Peace on Earth.  Happy New Year, Everybody!!

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