The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I was down at the Diner a couple months ago. Anita, our morning waitress had let slip the news they were going to change the menus. Some of the regulars were instantly agitated — and this was before their second cup of Black Tar coffee, a high-dosage distilled caffeine that would prop a trucker ramrod straight behind the wheel of a Kenworth hauling from Stanwood to Berdoo.

“Why tamper with perfection?” 3 Putt Pete was asking the entire assemblage of us Late Morning crowd, although purportedly he was aiming his alarm at Brenda behind the cash register. When she’d finished ringing up Little Willy, our ex-commissioner who served one term before half these yahoos sent him packing over a detour during a months long road construction, she turned on 3 Putt and scowled her Early Morning No Nonsense scowl that sent half the boyz back to breakfast lest she shot a laser blast at them, ruining way more than some suddenly overcooked omelette smoldering on a charred plate. 3 Putt wasn’t looking her way, unfortunately for him, sort of like Bambi hopping happily in the meadow before Godzilla makes venison toejam out of our cute critic.

“Why, oh why,” he was lamenting, maybe imagining this was his Big Chance at a thespian breakthrough, play to the Imagined Producer who might be taking breakfast Off Broadway, “why can’t we just accept things as they are, not ruin em by pushing the limits to what might never be?”

By the conclusion of his soliloquy, Pete was practically standing on his chair, fork and knife dancing in a grand flourish of stainless and saliva, the expected applause, the cries of ‘Author’ and ‘Bravo!’ soon to follow …. when Brenda slammed the register shut to steal the finale while shaking a receipt in 3 Putt’s direction. You could’ve heard an egg break back on Big Larry’s grill as total silence descended on the café heavy as that chlorine gas leak the previous week when a welding torch opened a mystery tank and set off a South End mustard gas evacuation.

“For the luvva Grease, Pete, will you sit down!? We’re not changing the food, you fool, just the damn menus. These old ones are tattered and stained. You’ll still get your chicken fried steak and that heart attack that can’t come quick enough, you ask me.”

3 Putt, you can rest assured, left enough tip to pay half the printing costs. And when those new menus arrived a few days later, it was Pete who admitted they were a fine addition to the Diner and asked meekly if he could take one of the old ones home. As a special keepsake. Historians, it seems, are made, not born.

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Folks ask me why I write these odd little vignettes of life on the salty South End. I always want to answer something like Because I have to. I have no choice. Us artists love to talk that way. Mr. Picasso, Pablo … why do you paint? To live, my little friend, to live. We never say, So I don’t have to work, you damn fool, what did you think?

We’re an odd society, us Americanos. We tend to exalt the Artiste as somehow unique, special, a rare breed, a person on an exalted plane. Probably the result of mental illness or malignant non-conformity. Prone to alcoholism, drug abuse and extreme hedonism. Who suffers more due to sensitivities more painful than herpes and who dies an early death with only one ear remaining.

We seem to like the notion of Starving Artists. Only through suffering, I guess, can you break the bonds of normality and ascend into true inspiration. Maybe explains why we keep minimum wages low — we’re trying to help folks find their Muse.

Art is a form of insanity, we think. Why else would a grown yahoo live in squalor, risk the hostilities of friends and family and neighbors alike, all for a passion that rarely makes a living and is always an invitation to cruel criticism.

“Let me show you my newest painting. Be honest, what do you think?” Do you folks do that??? Would normal people do that??? And the sad part: artists are the very WORST at rejection. Every review, criticism, rejection and commentary is a verdict on their creation. On them! Imagine the neighbors knocked on your door and gave you a criticism of your kid. “Did a nice job raising Jimmy, pal. Spittin image. Too bad about that shoplifting incident and that pregnant no-account girlfriend of his. Next time maybe get a vasectomy. Just thought you’d like to know. By the way, my daughter, Jennifer, she just got accepted by Harvard Medical School.”

So why do we write … or paint … or put broken glass back together? I could lie to you, I could spin a web, I could wax romantic or philosophic. But the truth is if I didn’t, I’d go crazy out of sheer boredom. I’ll probably go crazy anyway, just not as fast….

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“No Way! No Way!” Techno Tim was hollering to any and all down at the South End Bait Shop and Marina where he was checking his 25 foot Arima parked in its berth. Both Tim and the fishing boat were rocking wildly, buffeted by storms real and imagined. A few of us boyz were hustling along the dock, tightening lines, securing bumpers, trying in vain to avoid Tim’s rant, especially when we all ended up trapped inside after the front of the squall sent waves lapping over the wharf and rain sent us all scurrying indoors, soaked in 15 seconds.

Cap’n Phil didn’t even wait before drawing our favorite beers from the cooler. And neither did we, grabbing beer rags and towels and bottles in one choreographed movement, drying off and wetting down simultaneously to Tim crying “No Way can this country afford raising minimum wage!!!”

“You’re a small businessman, Skipper, tell em what’ll happen when you can’t afford to hire help at 20 bucks an hour.” Cap’n Phil slid back behind the counter, half defensive, half official, half hidden, mostly none of the above. “You sorta answered your own question, Tim,” he dodged.

“Damn right! Nobody can stay afloat paying high wages,” Techno shouted, proud of his meteorological metaphor in the very teeth of the storm lashing the Pilot House that served as informal bar for the Marina. Miserable already, I decided my 2 cents wouldn’t make much difference. “Techno, you gotta put yourself in their place, the ones working full time and can’t make a Go of it.” “Their place?” T.T. spluttered, sparying foam over his storm battered lips. “Their place? Get a better job, I say. Get some ambition! Get an education! Quit looking for handouts.”

“Seems a little cold hearted, Tim,” Gyppo John threw in, a towel draped over his head. He looked like a post-fight boxer. That, or a demented Yasser Arafat. “Cold hearted? Hell yes! It’s dog eat dog in the jungle of capitalism. Wake up and smell the money, John! The losers deserve what they get!”

“Pretty much nothing,” I answered. Techno Tim always did rock my boat.

“Serves em right,” he cried happily and threw down half his Bud Light in one victorious gulp, then slammed the bottle triumphantly on the formica … before noticing the bow line on his Arima had wrenched loose and his boat was bashing against the neighbors. Howling, he headed for the door. “You guys gonna help?” he asked mournfully, pausing at the door.

Gyppo said, “Dog eat dog, Tim Boy.” Cap’n Phil said he was feeling cold hearted all of a sudden. I asked, slouched comfortably in my seat, “What’re you paying. I sure don’t work minimum.”

T.T. cursed us one and all , then scrambled into the squall. We waited a judicious minute, grins all around, then finally went out to help. Fun is fun, but in the end we’re all in this together.

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We had some mail theft recently. My neighbor Erich was vacationing with the family in some exotic place – Smokey Point, I think maybe it was – and I was feeding the cats, checking the mail, doing what neighbors usually do when friends go away. My neighbors across the street even mow each other’s grass, but they don’t have the estate Erich does and I suppose I could make excuses, but hellfire, I was feeding his cussed cats and picking up his bills – you expect me to pay em too????
Okay okay. After a few days of emptying the mailbox, you get to know a person pretty good, sort of an unpaid private eye, seeing what bills come from who, what associations they belong to, what magazines they get, what charities they contribute to, all that personal stuff. You can learn a lot –NOT that I’m analyzing their buying habits, their credit card information, their giving trends, their collection agencies, the nasty threats they get; no, I’m just picking it up and hiding it where snoopy folks, TOO inquisitive folks won’t find it and make it THEIR business when it isn’t. I mean we used to have privacy laws in this country and I don’t care WHAT the damn government’s doing, I think a person ought to be able to hide his sins from the rest of the nosey neighbors.
So when I get to day 3 and the Collection Agency seems to have given up and the credit card applications have dried up and the charitable organizations have wised up and there’s NO MAIL for 3 straight days, I should’ve known. I should’ve waited by the mailbox in the ditch with all the empty beercans with a sawed off shotgun, cause I should’ve SURMISED some meth dealing crackhead was stealing Erich’s IDENTITY!!

But I’m happy to say it didn’t ever occur to me and because of that, Erich can thank me because that desperate junkie got more than junk mail, he got all of Erich’s overdue bills and now HE’S stuck with em and he’ll get to pay em off with his ill-gotten drug money and I say justice once again prevailed. So Erich can thank me for bailing him out once again. I just hope next time he doesn’t expect me to mow the lawn too.

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