The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Hits: 19

I got a couple of cronies who still write letters, which I return religiously, but the truth is, most of my correspondence these days is by e-mail. Tells you my age right there. The folks younger than me, they look at e-mail almost like snail mail. Too wordy, too long, too damn much trouble when you can text message.

For the longest time I thought a lot of my digital pen-pals were entering senility or onset Alzheimers. Their spelling got terrible, the syntax was lost, the punctuation became perfunctory. That, or they only send e-mails when they’re drunk or on drugs or not fully caffeinated. Or, knowing half my cronies, all of the above…. It took me a couple of years to discover they were treating e-mails like text messages.

I majored in English in college. Even taught it for a short time. Literature, communication skills, language — call me old fashioned and wheel me out for Nathaniel Hawthorne Day, but I still think these are useful skills. I was in town today, bantering with a friend in a shared language, English, and we still had a misunderstanding. Imagine two people trying to communicate with separate linguistics. Kind of like a native Utsaladian asking directions down here for the South End Diner. Good luck, Sven! Probably end up at the Marina ordering lutefisk. Possibly tragic consequences.

Lately I’ve been noticing that responses to my e-mails are, well …. Let’s be kind here … it’s as if they only read the first sentence. I’m realizing all my literary endeavors are completely wasted. AND, worse! They’re just so much extraneous clutter for my recipient. They’re not going to read anything longer than a Tweet now. Anything more, I don’t care if it’s Pulitzer Worthy, it’s instant trash. If I got something Important to say, better just SAY it. Folks are a little too busy for floral accoutrements, literary flourishes, or artistic embellishments. Which, now that I think of it, means most of you readers abandoned me back in the first paragraph.

Well, okay. I just re-read the first paragraph. Too wordy. Too long. Too damn much trouble when you can text message. Here’s the tip of the day: hit DELETE. If you haven’t already…..

Hits: 87

Hits: 17

A few of us South Enders were up at the Camanoloch golf course’s 19th Hole, a hole in the wall café claiming “The Best Burgers on the Island.” Maybe when there wasn’t another restaurant…. It was a Monday night Seahawks game and the few sports fanatics who didn’t subscribe to cable and ESPN were hunkered expectantly at our formica tables drinking bottled beer from the cooler next to the cash register and a table selling golf balls and tees.

Must’ve been a total of three tables, the sum total of cable-deprived islanders. Ralph was grumbling that maybe we should’ve driven the extra ten miles to a bar with TV’s bigger than his laptop screen, but the game had started and the rest of us weren’t all that die-hard a fans and weren’t motoring off island in search of some sportsbar with 16 TV’s mounted strategically so every seat was Front Row. We had a front row right here. The beers were cold, the 19th Hole had advertised the ballgame and we’d taken the bait. Even Ralph accepted the finality of the decision and grabbed another bottle from the trap.

What I think we’ve accepted, all of us, is that sports are king in modern America and football is more popular by far than politics or American Idol. Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses, but he never imagined 15 cable channels of every sport from soccer to ping pong, bobsledding to skateboarding, rugby to kickboxing. As more and more of us couch potatoes hunker down over our laptops and bigscreens, eschewing any and all physical involvement with the real world, we seem addicted to almost anything that smacks of competition, whether it’s football or ballroom dancing.
One of our buddies here at the 19th Hole, Harold, never misses American Idol. He secretly thinks he’s a crooner and I have no doubt whatsoever he imagines himself under the klieg lights on the neon-lit stage, belting out Sinatra to 30 million crazed viewers who plan to vote for him. He’s elbow down with his Bud Lite watching the halftime show. Our team is losing by a field goal and maybe Jerry at the far table is warming up his kicking leg in his private fantasy.

We’re all lost in those fantasies these days. Doesn’t really hurt, I guess, but I suspect a lot of what we used to call real life is only glimpsed on the crawlers at the bottom of the screen while we’re all dancing with the stars. Way of the world, nowadays, I suppose, just living vicariously, way more losers than winners in the Big Game of Life. Although …. we all imagine ourselves the winners. Harold is singing some jingle from the last commercial as he heads to the cooler, only slightly off-key. I decide to have one more beer too. Might as well make it a duet.

Hits: 16

Hits: 21

I got a buddy who, like too many of the entrepreneurial South End, works ‘under the table’. Meaning, for you law abiding legitimate taxpayers, he gets paid in cash so he doesn’t have to report his wages to the IRS or pay state income tax on those earnings. Totally illegal, you understand. Even most undocumented immigrants pay income tax and social security withdrawals, even if they’ll probably never see one dime of social security.

My pal thinks he’s outsmarting ‘The Man’. Uncle Sam. Big Government. I’m old fashioned, I guess, or a little out of synch. I pay taxes – admittedly, not a whole lot of taxes since I don’t make a whole lot of money as a starving artist – and I don’t mind paying em. Pays for roads and police and fire fighters and EMT’s and schoolteachers and courthouses and city halls and libraries and, well, all those sorta important things The Man is there to do. It’s a long list and I bet some of it I wish He wasn’t doing, like maybe some of our recent wars. But I got a vote and I’ll accept the outcome, being happy to live in a so-called democracy.

I got another buddy who set up an offshore account to AVOID paying The Man. Mitt Romney does the same thing and it’s totally LEGAL. Boeing just got a 9 billion dollar tax break from this state after they threatened to move somewhere that paid more for their extortion, then they busted the union, offered them their ‘last chance’ to capitulate or else. The union voted 51% to keep their jobs at whatever Boeing was offering. Democracy in action. We got major corporations that pay zero taxes. Zip. Nada. Zilch. All perfectly legal.

So okay, I pay my taxes. My buddies think I’m a damn fool. The Man tells me I’m a Good Citizen. Me, I think Boeing should pay taxes and I think those corporations should too. I think I can tell the difference between our fair share and a tax loophole for the rich even if I don’t have a lobbyist on the payroll. Maybe that’s because I confuse Morality with Legality. Something that’s easy to do on the South End.

Hits: 17

Hits: 22

We had a major crime wave down here recently. Naw….. I don’t mean the Barefoot Bandit. He’s cooling his heels down at the Federal Pen South of Seattle. Probably learning new techniques at our prison —- that, or he’s teaching his fellow students, tuition, night classes, gov’t. grants, GI Bill money. Phoenix School of Federal Way. “Come Fly With Me” as a slogan.

Naw, we had some home invasions, front doors broken down, valuables stolen, safes hauled out — all in the broad daylight down by the end of the island. A good forensic detective could put pins on the map and just about trace em right back to the first break-in, about where the mailboxes were being hit and letters strewn beside the road. Got a couple of guys down there, both in the habit of rolling their cars, nodding off at the wheel. The Oxycontin Kids. I’m sure most of us and the sheriff’s deputies too knew who was responsible — and why.

Naw, not society. Not the Stanwoodopolis School System. These two yahoos needing money to buy heroin. Oh, I spoze we could blame the heroin dealers for price gouging. Or the job creators for paying too little, forcing our culprits to quit the job market and seek more lucrative compensation elsewhere. Like from us….

Now, understand, I majored in sociology in college. Which, of course, is why I’m a starving artist now. But that’s another lecture for another day. So I know the Root Causes, the societal ills, the entire panoply of excuses…. the ones that get thrown right out the window when it’s your shack that’s burglarized and your TV set and laptop computer that get stolen and pawned for nickels on the dollar.

Most of us would probably give these punks a buck or two, about the same as the pawnshop or the fence is gonna give em just to NOT break a door down. Call it insurance, call it bleeding heart liberalism, call it charity. It’s that or we could just do like Halloween and leave a basket of methadone on the doorstep, a treat instead of a theft. Save us all the money wasted on security systems and the extra ammo.

Hits: 14

Hits: 25

The Saratoga Landscaping and Lawn Service used to be Don’s Lawn and Brawn. Don had a couple of used Sears 22 inch cut rear-baggers, an overhauled Stihl weedeater for the hard to reach places and the ditches, plus a little edger that a few of his fussier clients required. He hauled all the tools of his trade in a 1978 Datsun flatbed pickup with a handlettered sign on each door DON’S LAWN & BRAWN 387-LAWN.

Don worked six, sometimes seven days a week, rain, shine or fog, but he invariably fell behind when the monsoons came in the late spring, early summer, and never really caught up until the droughts of August. Shortly after, his workload dropped in the opposite direction as the barometer that usually stayed high until October.

When his knees started to go, about 1996, he bought his first rider. 4 speed, 40 inch cut, headlights, battery start. And he hired his next door neighbor’s dropout kid to mow half the clients with a self-propelled Honda model, figuring he’d upgrade to another tractor if everything worked out. New folks were retiring here by the droves, folks who wanted their postage stamp lots immaculately manicured … by someone other than themselves. Retirement meant just that — retire the damn mower.

Bizness picked up, his neighbor’s punk kid absconded with his new self-propelled and the other tools and Don went through a series of similar help, young guys with poor work ethics and low ambition coupled with various substance abuse issues. Clients were irate and business, being mostly word-of-mouth references, suffered. And Don sure didn’t want to go solo any more. Retirement looked further away the more he yearned for it.

Fortunately he hired Miguel, a 35 year old ‘immigrant’ from Ensenada. Worked hard, didn’t complain about the poor wages and didn’t steal Don’s tools, didn’t do drugs on the job and spoke enough English to communicate with the clients. Before long Miguel’s uncle Juan signed on, then most of his extended family entered the U.S. Labor Force through the backdoor of the South End.

Don retired a year ago, sold the business to Uncle Juan and now most of the lawn services up and down the island are done by a lawnmowing cartel in fleets of shiny red Ford 150’s with professional lettering on the side DON JUAN’S LAWNS. They’re reliable, they’re honest, they’re industrious, they’re the new Americans, documented or not, simmering nicely in the South End melting pot.

Hits: 280