The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

You don’t need a sociology degree from the Stanwoodopolis University to know that these modern times we live in make us more isolated from each other.  Oh sure, you got 1500 ‘friends’ on Facebook and you all watch the same TV shows and ‘like’ the same shampoo, but if you need help hauling an appliance from the Goodwill to the back porch, good luck with any of those ‘friends’ driving the truck you need.

Even a gnarly curmudgeon like myself believes Social Networking is okay so far as it goes, but down here on the pioneer South End, we got a slightly more Hands-On social network.  Last week I got a call that a friend whose sibling was being held by the state for remedial psychiatric assistance, needed help clearing house and property.  A bunch of us dropped what we were doing and headed up the holler with chainsaws, packing boxes, garbage sacks and pickup trucks.  We’re still at it, but we’ll get her done.

Another friend needs a little construction done, one needed a lift to the doctor’s office for an eye operation, another wants her cats cared for while she’s on vacation, someone needs help dropping a tree and just this morning I got a call to deliver a prescription to the drug store — the list goes on.

You live on the frontier, you need each other.  Learning how to ask for help might just be harder than learning how to give it, but it’s worth learning if you want to live down here in the remote nettle regions of the Great Mossback backwash.  Nobody said it would be easy, but it doesn’t have to be too hard either….  All I can say is folks who bellyache about the damn government interfering with their right to ignore their neighbors’ plights better hope their safety net isn’t 1500 yahoos on Facebook.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/audio-thinking-outside-the-box1.mp3[/podcast]audio — thinking outside the box

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Before the advent of circuit boards, silicon chips and computerized everything, us do-it-yerselfers took no little pride in fixing our broken appliances, our busted stereos, our crippled cars and even our dysfunctional lives.  Really didn’t have much choice given our fiscal challenges.  The washing machine quits, you have to weigh that $50 service fee just to drive down here.   Believe me, you’ll learn to diagnose a blown fuse or a broken fan belt yourself before you wait two days in your last clean underwear and then pay half the cost of a Maytag to keep the wringer washer working another six months.

My dryer quit this week.  Nothing new there — it goes on strike regularly.  But this time the little gizmo that held the blown fuse wouldn’t let go of the fuse.  No big deal — I went on-line, googled up the part, found it … and discovered it cost more than that service fee I’m trying to save.  Being a South Ender I balked at the rip-off price.  No way was I paying $54 plus shipping for a plastic toy fuseholder.  Next trip into town I scrounged the hardware store, found a reasonable facsimile and rewired the dryer to hold it …. And yeah, $5 later, I was fluffing up my dungarees.

Sometimes it pays to think outside the box, cornball as that expression is.  I bought an extra hard drive for my computer — and oh yeah, I got one — but when it came it wouldn’t fit inside the Tower.  A North Ender might send it back, see if there was a better fit.  But like I said, we like to think outside the box, so I cut a slot with a hacksaw in the tower side and slid that new blank brain right in and left its frontal lobe sticking out for better ventilation.  Sure, the missus shook her head sadly.  But the salient point here is that it worked and  MORE IMPORTANT BY FAR, the job was done.

The trick here is to show No Fear to these malfunctioning objects, even the ‘black boxes’.  They sense fear quicker than a dog or a tax assessor.  Open them up, grab a handful of wires, pull on em with authority, half the time they’ll respond positively when they realize unequivocally you’re the Boss.  When my VCR ate a rental movie, I eviscerated the aggressive little unit and when it still refused to function, I made an example of it to its electronic brethren and tossed it two stories out into the driveway.  I have put rocks through recalcitrant TV picture tubes and in one instance burned one alive, fully plugged in, begging like HAL in 2001—A Space Odyssey.  Some machines are incapable of learning.  You must be firm.  You may even need to be ruthless.  The worst mistake you can make is allowing one miscreant cyborg mutant monster to infect the rest.  Give em an inch, they’ll grab half of cyberspace.

For those who think it’s a brave new world, one where nothing can be fixed or repaired, cowboy UP!  Down here we aren’t going to be slaves to the machine.  Even if we have to destroy every damn one ….!

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/audio-roadkill-recipes.mp3[/podcast]audio — roadkill recipes

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All us regulars down at the South End Diner were a little taken aback the other day to find a notice on the Special of the Day readerboard:  NO Pink Slime in our Burgers, Not Now, Not NEVER!!   I guess all the new coverage of offal mixed into whatever else the FDA deems safe for carnivores had finally hit a nerve in the nethermost regions of Rome.  Or at least Sammy the Skillet’s nerves.  He was slapping burgers around on the grill like he was looking for a domestic violence charge.

Most of us know when Sammy should be left alone, but Two Toke Tom might’ve been one toke over the line when he called out from his stool — “Hey, Sam, hold the slime, but go heavy on the antibiotics, will ya?  I got a cold comin’ on….”  Brenda, from the working side of the counter, whacked him sternly on the knuckles with a serving spoon, but it was too late, Sam was on his way, spatula dripping grease and growth hormones, and anybody near Two Toke moved perceptibly out of range of what looked to be certain meat-based mayhem.  Even T.T. realized his mistake.  Those dilated eyes of his widened to the width of twin coffee cup saucers as he threw up his hands defensively.  “Sorry, man, sorry.  Truly!  Sammy, I mean it!!”

Sam glowered menacingly, but finally shook his head, wiped grease on his apron and went back to his grilling.  Brenda rapped Two Toke once more for good measure and the rest of us all chuckled nervously and after a minute or three, the conversational pitch was almost back to normal, meaning caffeinated and lively.  I did notice, though, that the burger orders were few and far between.  BLT’s and frozen fish sandwiches were substituted instead.  I had my usual cheeseburger — nobody’s gonna accuse ME of wussing out over food additives.  After all, I’m a dyed pink in the wool South Ender.  But … I really did want to ask Brenda, confidentially and out of everyone else’s hearing range, what do you suppose they really do to that Velveeta?

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/AUDIO-UNEMPLOYMENT-FIGURES.mp3[/podcast]AUDIO — UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES

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On the capitalist South End we entrepreneurs have been forced by lack of normal fiscal opportunity to adapt to our harsh circumstances.  To an outsider we may appear, oh, somewhat desperate, possibly a little deranged, but once you acclimate a bit to the slower pace of backwash living, you’ll apprehend the frontier wisdom of these moss-backed pioneers.

From free range clam herders to hydroponic nettle farmers, from every kind of artist working in every conceivable medium, we got folks scrounging up a marginal living with their bare hands and their even barer wits.  Two Toke Tom is a fine example.  For decades he’s been farming his pitiful piece of scrub, five acres of logged off old growth nettle forest that he’s been what agriculturists call ‘amending the soil’, meaning, he’s fertilizing with the neighbor’s chicken poop droppings to grow his income of Camano Cannabis.  Course, pot was illegal and Two Toke was, I guess you’d say, a criminal.  Kind of a harsh assessment, you ask me, but then, I got Daddle Distilleries back in the tundra so maybe my assessment is a mite biased….

Now, of course, with Medical Marijuana about to be legalized, old Tom is forced to adapt once more.  Dr. Tom, he calls himself down at the South End Diner.  A local healer.  Practically a shaman.  He’s got a few good years, he figures, to make a fast killing before Phillip Morris and the Big Boys grow bud commercially in climate controlled greenhouses guarded by Blackwater contractor/soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan.  Pretty soon, he says, you’ll buy weed from CostCo in the Liquor Department and he’ll be back to painting watercolors for the tourist trade at Tyee Store.

No one ever said the Good Times would last forever down at our Shangri-La-La, but if anyone is ready for unemployment, it’s a South Ender.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/audio-breaking-news.mp3[/podcast]audio — breaking news

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