The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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South End society runs the gamut these days from Dot.com millionaires to meth-heads. You live down here in the tonier backwashes, you acquire a necessary degree of egalitarianism. That, or you move into the Gated Communities, rig up elaborate security systems and hope the unwashed masses don’t mistake the moat around your castle as a fancy hot tub.

One of our neighbors who went by the moniker of ‘Dawg’ married a woman south of me and immediately added 4 stepkids to his care. His ex was living over the mountains with two of his other kids and so, in the spirit of misguided parenthood, Dawg and his old lady hired an attorney to regain custody of those poor deprived children being raised by a single mom who’d taken up with an ex-con and worse, one on drugs. Dawg and his mizzus were also on drugs, drank heavily, but they had decided their parental skills would serve the children best.

And so they finally convinced a judge and child services to return the two teenagers to the stability and warmth of a South End home, to be raised by paragons of virtue and join the family circle. A year later Dawg and the mizzus split the sheets after she’d shacked up with an alcoholic loser on the north end and left him with 4 juvenile delinquent stepkids and his own 2 genetic ones. In the spirit of sacrifice and after considerable deliberation with myself and Jack Daniels, Dawg moved out too.

Lest you think Dawg was heartless, it should be stated he came down once a week to fill the fridge and ‘check on things’. “I just can’t be here all the damn time,” he told me. “And anyway, those kids of hers (meaning the mizzus’) hate my guts.”

The neighbors grew concerned when the parties lasted deep into the night, cars honked horns and tore out at 2 AM and numerous fights were continually breaking out. Chickens, dogs, cats, meth dealers and other animals came and went in the house whose doors were wide open day and night. The floors were urine and feces stained and the place reeked like a Texas porta-potty in August. Dawg told me his daughter — the one he’d ‘rescued’ from an abusive life — was now pregnant. She was 15, maybe 16. When she came, she was a bright and inquisitive kid. Now she could look forward to teenage motherhood.

There’s plenty of guilt to go around and I have some myself for not going to the police or child protection services or even calling some church. My mother used to tell us kids, “It takes all kinds to make a world.” And when we got to be smartass teenagers, we’d reply, “Right, Mom, that’s why it’s all screwed up.”

Dawg got fired awhile back from his job of 25 years. He ended up marrying his ex, the woman whose kids he took and ruined. It only lasted a year or so, then she hooked up with a biker from Seattle.  I ran into him the other day. Same old Dawg. Like he always said when he lived down here: No brains, no headaches. Dawg hasn’t got either.

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You live on the wild wild South End, you know the Long Arm of the Law isn’t all THAT lengthy and the Reach of Rome isn’t either. Frontier Justice is what we got, more often than not, although I’m not saying I’m an advocate. Me, I’m like most of us down here at the end of the county road —- I just want to be left in peace.

Dan the Woodcarvin Man is of the same mind, maybe more so. He got a new neighbor on the north side of his 5 acres, pretty much out of sight through a stand of woods, although with the new hound that came with the new couple, not exactly out of earshot. It drove him a little crazy all that incessant barking, and he spoke with the couple finally when it chased his cat up a tree and it took two days to get it to come back to terra firma. The wife flat out told him their dog never left the property and slammed the door behind her when she stomped back inside. Dan and the husband — he thought his name was Jesse — stood there in awkward silence. Until Jesse’s sweetheart stormed back out and told Jess to get his ass inside and Dan to get his off her property.

Robert Frost said good fences make good neighbors. He meant it ironically. A week after being thrown off their property, a gyppo with a chainsaw the size of a Ditch Witch rolled in and in an hour, half a dozen huge firs and cedars were kissing the ground, two on Dan’s fence and his property, one was even his own tree, a prized old cedar. The nice couple, when he mentioned it to them through a half open front door after he got home to discover the clearcut backyard, told him the tree in question was theirs and his fence was too. Woodcarvin Dan wanted to be Headcarvin Dan for a brainbusting moment or too, but murder, even down here, WILL bring the Law.

I’m not gonna tell you Dan’s a pacifist, but he doesn’t look for trouble either. He had the property surveyed to prove his claim, left the stakes ribboned and ran a new fence two feet inside those. A week later he received a court summons that informed him his neighbors were suing him for trespass, for threatening to kill their dog and for his surveyor’s trespassing as well. Dan hired a local lawyer, legal papers went back and forth with their attorney, they went to court and the judge ruled in Dan’s favor. So far he was only out $6000. Justice occasionally prevails, but it doesn’t come cheap.

Last I heard, Dan had gotten another legal letter from his neighbors’ lawyer, this time that he’d threatened to harm their kid. Dan’s never talked to the lad other than one time to ask him NOT to play in his pond. And the Neighborhood Association, according to Jesse’s wife, was going to file an insurance claim for their shed half on Dan’s property his fence runs into the middle of. Dan, nearly berserk and rapidly going broke, asked me for advice. Which tells you all you need to know about his state of exasperation and desperation.

Quit hiring attorneys, I said. Let them pay the legal fees. They’re bluffing, I said. They’re obviously insane. They’ll be bankrupt by the end of the year, the place will go on the market, they’ll move to a new place to torment someone else. Dan asked, “You really think so?” I said, “How the hell would I know, Dan?”

So Dan’s living in Paradise with the Neighbors from Hell, the Hitler Family. You tell me, so I can tell Dan, what’s he supposed to do? Maybe better fences might not make the neighbors better, but he wouldn’t have to look at them. I don’t think Dan wants to build the Wall of Jerusalem over there …. but he’s thinking about it.

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Afternoon banter down at Jolene’s Beauty and Boutique had swung over to the upcoming library bond end of this April, as contentious an issue as gay marriage had been last month, with pretty much the same sides lining up for or against. Ronald, never one to let a debating opportunity slide by any more than a juicy gossip tidbit, started the whole shooting match by announcing he, for one, would vote yes and “anyone who wouldn’t must be,” he said snappishly in mid-scissor, “an illiterate elitist.”

Well, Martha Figgelstein lit up like a Christmas tree at Hannukah, let me tell you. “If I wanted a book, Ronald, I can just drive a little further to Stanwoodopolis … and you can too. Save us a fortune in unnecessary taxes.” Before Ronald could tell Martha the likelihood of her checking out a book, much less reading one, was as plausible as growing that thinning blue hair back you’re shedding, darling, Jolene shot him a glance from two chairs down, nearly shorting out the dryer on Mrs. Webster’s perm. “And if you can’t afford the extra gas, Ronald,” Martha sniffed, “you can take the free bus I pay too much in taxes for too.”

Sheila, streaking Jenny Fletcher’s already magenta hair to make a virtual green contrasting Mohawk down the middle, opined that her daughters loved that library and if it closed for good if the bond was defeated, they’d be heartbroken. “Oh, they’ll survive just fine, Sheila,” Martha sniped as Ronald snipped. “Let them eat cake,” he snorted, not glancing in Jolene’s direction.

“Why do we need a library anyway?” Mrs. Webster muttered from under her dryer, looking like an astronaut on a spacewalk. “Everyone has a computer now. Everything I need is on the internet. Waste of good money, you ask me, to buy a building and stuff it with books that are obsolete.” Steam poured out Ronald’s ears and through the half dozen rings lined up on the lobes, but Jolene, ever the diplomat and peacekeeper, said she remembered when the island didn’t have a real grocery store or a pharmacy or schools, no health clinic or paid firemen or even a deputy on duty after midnight. “We’re grown up now. We’re our own place. Might be time we got our own library too, I think,” she said and Ronald clapped his hands, nearly gouging himself with the scissors.

If the Beauty and Boutique is any preliminary poll, this will be a close vote. Ronald says he’ll move away if the bond loses, but no one believes him. Although, it may cost Jolene a hefty raise to keep him.

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Down at the O-Zi-Ya Body Shop, the Debating Society was going at it hot and heavy concerning the underground economy. Deadhead Davy was leaned over the fender of Ralph Stankowski’s prized ’67 Cobra, gooping bondo with a putty knife into a nasty dent from a run-in with what Ralph told his mizzus was a deer. Us boyz knew better … and she did too, but for the sake of South End civility, plus the insurance claim, we all put our orders in for roadkill venison.

Ralph was jawing on Davy about deadbeat illegals, under-the-table con artists and losers on food stamps. “Leeches on society,” he proclaimed. All Davy had said was he wished he didn’t have to pay the same sales tax as the rich folks, meaning,
Ralph figured, Ralph. “You people,” Ralph practically yelled, even though we were all within ten feet of each other, “you think we OWE you a living. You smoked too much of that LDS, Davy. The 60’s are over and you missed the next few decades. Time to catch up.”

It’s a tough crowd at the Body Shop. Too much paint sniffing, too many insurance scams. That paint job for Ralph would cost half again what you’d pay. Sort of the opposite of healthcare without insurance.

“I pay taxes, Ralph,” Deadhead was protesting. “I just want em to be fair.” “Fair??” our deerslayer was asking. “Nobody should pay much taxes, you ask me. Wasted on bullshit. Wasted by the damn government. My money should be my money. I earned it. Good luck to the leeches.”

“Like Boeing?” I asked, pulling open Snap-On drawers just to admire the array of wrenches, sockets, drivers and all the rest in immaculate order, accessible at a glance. “Don’t start THAT, Skeeter, all that class warfare crap,” Jimmy said from over by the grease pit. “And quit fiddling with the tool chest. Big John’ll have a fit if you get something out of place.”

“Davy pays more taxes than Boeing, Ralph. Hell, I pay more than Boeing and General Electric put together and I don’t pay doodley-squat. What do YOU call it? Job creator subsidies? I call it Corporate Foodstamps.”

Ralph spluttered like a clogged windshield washer. “I sold insurance for 35 years, paid way more taxes than you two clowns, don’t tell ME you pay your fair share.”

“I sure wouldn’t try to tell you much of anything, Ralph! I’m saying we pay More than our fair share. Cause we let you Fat Cats off the hook. Money to buy vintage cars and wreck em. Motorhomes. Vacation houses. Half the country works for minimum wage. How fair you think that is??”

And so it went. Just another day down at the Body Shop where the dents get pulled and the scratches buffed out, where order is restored and everything is kept in its proper place, where the universe spins nicely on its greased bearings while the rich get richer and the poor get bitchier. Poor Davy. With friends like me, who needs Ralph?

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I got a pal, Chainsaw Sam, who, like a lot of us, works for himself. He lives pretty much hand-to-mouth, gets paid under the table, probably won’t ever receive Social Security. He’s a hard worker, does everything from tree removal to deck building, gives an honest day’s labor for pretty much minimum wage pay. Sam doesn’t complain … but then, I don’t think it’s hit him yet that there will never be what most of the immigrants to the island have: a retirement.

 
So when ObamaCare hit the ground limping last fall — the health insurance half of the country doesn’t call by its actual name, the Affordable Care Act — I told Chainsaw he ought to check it out. With his income he probably would get affordable health care coverage. Sam, being a natural born libertarian who mistrusts the government, banks, politicians, newcomers, traditional medicine, the media and dogs that are pedigreed, wasn’t sure he would. Maybe, maybe not. Not real sure he needed insurance, Sammy said. I said they’ll give it to you nearly for free, whaddaya got to lose? “Yeah,” he said, “that’s what my mom sez too.”

 
Great. So now I’m in the same category as his nagging mama. “Look into it,” I said. “You’re who they had in mind when they dreamed this bill up — all you uninsured yahoos. We got to pay for you anyway, so sign up, man.” Chainsaw protested he’d barely been sick a day in his life. Clean livin’, brother. Clean Livin’.

So of course two days ago I get the message he’s fallen off a ladder, a little six foot tumble. Shattered wrist, broken elbow. Emergency room. Ambulance. Medics. No insurance. Operations scheduled. Rehab. Meds. Doctors. Nurses. The lady with the alligator purse.   The Lord, it’s said, helps those who help themselves. Even the government tries. I tried. His Mama tried. If ignorance is bliss, okay. Let’s see if poverty is too…..

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