The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I know Xmas is a big deal in this country.  Starts before Halloween and ends ….  Well, if the retailers and the folks who never take down their twinkle lights are right, it never really ends.   Fa La La La….  But I want to say a word for those folks Xmas leaves behind in the hustle and bustle of consumerism.  The forgotten folks for who Xmas is out of reach.  The unemployed, the infirm, the senile, the demented, all life’s reluctant losers.  Yeah, I’m talking about the South End.

   So as you enjoy the festive moments of the holiday, occasionally give pause to remember us huddled masses down below the Mountain View/Dixon Line, so far from CostCo and Wal Mart and the Camano Plaza Mega Mall.  We’ll be celebrating in our own way.  Probably no power if there’s a wind stronger than 15 mph.  No TV specials cause we don’t get cable.  No friends dropping by for an egg nog or six.  Right …. Cause we don’t have friends.

     But don’t pity us.  We’ll be fine.  We’ll be okay.   Our shacks aren’t mortgaged to the rafters with subprime loan money.  Our investments aren’t dropping with the price of oil going up and the Dow Jones on a roller coaster run by Mr. Grinch.  Our cars aren’t being repossessed — hell, they don’t even run.  Our health care insurance isn’t sky high  — we don’t have any.

     No, we’ll be all right.  Pop a prozak and slam a celebratory beer.  Maybe skip the 100th rerun of It’s a Wonderful Life or Miracle on Mountain View Road.  Maybe just have some neighbors in, play Jingle Bells on the banjo, cook up a potluck, drink last year’s blackberry wine that wasn’t county roadsprayed, and like always, hope for a better year next one, no wars, peace on earth.  Don’t you worry about us — one thing we know, it’s how to celebrate Xmas

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/audio-its-a-wonderful-south-end-life.mp3[/podcast]audio — it’s a wonderful south end life

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/a-christmas-carol-on-the-chinese-south-end.mp3[/podcast]a christmas carol on the chinese south end

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  Back in the less consumer-driven days of early Christmas, we South Enders would hang our stockings by the chimney with great care. Mostly so they wouldn’t catch fire…I mean, we used that chimney for heat.  How Santa was going to get down the brick chute without scorching those red pajamas of his, us young’uns didn’t have a clue.  So we worried about St. Nick.  Well, mostly we worried he wouldn’t leave us anything at all while he was hustled off to the nearest burn unit.   Our parents told us not to lose any sleep over it – Santa probably had fire retardant uniforms.  Oh, right, like Kris Kringle moonlighted as a chemist half the year.       

    But Santa always did seem to find the South End on Christmas …  which didn’t help to explain the half empty stockings and the paucity of presents under the tree every year at our house.  We kids just figured Santa had checked his stupid list, probably twice, and we were blacklisted on the NAUGHTY side once again.  We even used to leave cookie bribes and a jug of something savory to drink when he showed up.  It was odd how the jug was always empty and still, the stockings were sadly deficient.  Pa always said the reindeer must’ve been thirsty and we’d say, hey, if Donder and Blitzen could find their way here and down a burning chimney with a 6 inch hole to the woodstove, how come St. Nick couldn’t find us?  And Ma would give Pa a dirty look and say, something was Blitzen all right, but it wasn’t the reindeer….

     Santa finds the South End pretty easily now, I’m telling you.  Come Christmas morning it looks like a China R Us down the middle of the living room, barely room to squeeze near the tree.  Nowadays we don’t leave Santa a plate of cookies.  He expects an ATM machine and a Visa Card.  Christmas down on the South End lasts and lasts – about 12 easy payments, then it starts all over ….

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/class-warfare6.mp3[/podcast]class warfare

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I’ve been ensconced the past few days in one of the posh old hotels of Anchorage, Alaska, the Captain Cook,  a brass and wood accommodation with multiple restaurants, jewelry shops in case I forgot my tiara, boutiques, art galleries, shoeshine and salon, virtually a town within a city.  The doormen are cordial, the desk reserved, my fellow clientele seldom return a hello or good day.  The Triple A restaurant on the 20th floor requires ‘smart casual’ dinner attire.  My own wardrobe seemed casual but maybe not bright enough for Alaskan gentility.
An art project through the University set this up — government rate — and so I opted for something more upscale than my usual ‘we’ll leave a 40 watt light on’ Spartan hellhole with peeling wallpaper, stained rugs and mildewed tile.  My bed has 6 large pillows.  5 are stacked on the floor now, a cushy mountain.  A few blocks down the street is a single forlorn tent in the downtown park with a sign that reads:  OCCUPY ANCHORAGE.   It was 12 degrees last night.  I thought about asking the concierge if I might have my unused pillows loaned during my stay.  Our occupier could use them as feather bedding.
You may have inferred that I am uncomfortable with the trappings of wealth, which I guess I am.  I don’t like royalty.  Or privilege.  I don’t even like the idea of 1st class seating on airlines.  I want people to rub shoulders with each other, not segregate themselves.  I want to feel like we’re together in this country, not gated off in walled neighborhoods.  I don’t want a doorman opening my door for me, I want the fellow in front of me offering — and I’ll hold it for the next.
I’m hearing a lot of handwringing these days about sparking class warfare come this next election.  The 99%ers vs. the 1%ers.  I’m not too fearful.  It’ll be fairly bloodless if I know America.  In the end we won’t redistribute much wealth.  We won’t tax the rich very much.  We won’t curb greed or help the poor.  We may never open doors for one another or say hello on the elevator.  And no, I don’t think it’s immoral to have 6 pillows on my bed.  It’s a free country.  But it is immoral some people don’t even have a bed.  And more immoral yet that we blame them instead of getting them a bed.  That, I think, is true class warfare.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/audio-version-kill-your-tv-before-it-kills-you1.mp3[/podcast]audio version — kill your tv before it kills you!

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It’s December here in Alaska.  For you 48’ers, that means snow and ice, bitter wind chills and extremely short dark days.  Unless you’re training for the Iditarod, you bolt shut the cabin doors, reach for the whisky bottle and settle in for the Yukon equivalent of hibernation:TV.
I’ve been here now, what seems an eternity, but is only four days.  I left with the flu my aging mother warned me 50 times to inoculate myself against and I’m only now beginning to eat once again.  Attempts at sightseeing or aimless hiking were usually shortcircuited with gastro-intenstinal rumblings that would have scared anything in the vicinity but moose.  Moose walk the streets here, grazing in cemeteries.  In my delirium, I never questioned it.  More cities should encourage moose.

Mostly, though, I missed travelogue Alaska.  What I did get a dose of was cable TV.  Maybe you have cable or Dish already.  I have an antenna on the roof, an upgrade from the old rabbit ear one we used for decades.  I see cable ads for, oh, $30 a month or so, which, I assumed, brought the viewer nearly unlimited viewing options.  After a couple of evenings with my hotel’s cable, I don’t understand why folks fork out anything, unless they (A) don’t have an antenna at all or (B) don’t have a roof to attach one to.

I had 40 channels of television freedom.  40!  By Hour Two I’d pretty much narrowed the 40 down to, oh, let’s be fair:  the comedy channel, two movie channels (that repeated the same films every day I watched), PBS-CNN-Fox-MSNBC just for my ‘news’ addiction (which it cured completely now that I will avoid all video news for the forseeable future or until I’m bedridden once again with something like terminal cancer).  The rest, well…..  maybe Extreme Pawn appeals to someone.  Or Chopper Sr. vs Jr perks up the Harley crowd.  Or Lick’s Towing, some backwash redneck clan of hillbilly repo men forever towing pickup trucks back from poor white trash meth cookers and their sorry ilk.  I could go on …. 30 more times.

But I’m at the airport now.  Frozen tarmac, snow bellying down from the Wrangell range.  It looks like a wasteland as far as the eye can see.  But … far far better than my last few nights in front of that hotel TV.

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