The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I got more than a couple of friends who think the economy — the world economy, no less — is on its way down the toilet. Huge debts, large deficits, the Federal Reserve printing money like it was Charmin — they see a Fiscal Armageddon on the horizon. Depression, unemployment, then the collapse of civilization as we know it. They’re wondering if it’s time to buy a gun. Or an arsenal. They’re wondering if they should buy Chinese currency or a year’s supply of food and water. They’re wondering what to do with their money that will keep them afloat when their neighbors drown.

I remember one of my dad’s pals, Malcolm, building a bomb shelter in his basement. Great guy, Malcolm, salt of the earth, a family man, just taking care of his family down in Northern Georgia near the foothills of the Appalachian where we lived. He took me down into his basement — I was all of 12 years old — to show me the shelter that would keep his family alive after the communists attacked us with nuclear weapons, an event he saw as inevitable.

He had water tanks and shelves full of canned goods. He had gas masks and a propane stove. He had flashlights and a ton of batteries. “Electricity’ll be gone. Maybe forever,” he told me. There were bunk beds and a portable toilet. It looked like Motel 6 had mated with a Goodwill. It really didn’t look like a home for months of subterranean living, unless you were gophers.

In the corner by the door Malcolm had his hunting rifle. “For food?” I asked, thinking maybe a dinner of radioactive deer might be the way to go. Malcolm picked up the gun and gave me a ‘serious’ look. “No, Skeeter,” he said solemnly. “Your dad didn’t plan for what’s coming and … well, when you all try to come to our shelter, I’d have to stop you. There’s only room for us.”

Now, I wasn’t the sharpest kid on the block, but I took his meaning pretty quick. “You mean you’d shoot us, Malcolm?” Malcolm set the rifle back in its spot and nodded. “I have to protect my family first. That’s the way it is.”

It’s real hard to like a man who tells you he’d kill you, whether you’re 12 or 64. The world after a nuclear war, and probably an economic Armageddon too, would be filled with Malcolms. They see the bleakest future and the darkest side of human nature, I suspect because they find it in themselves. Me, I’m not interested in either. But I’m always glad to know who to avoid, catastrophe or no.

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I got a couple of friends who live back off the blacktop down a dead end dirt road, a place they could be left alone in peace and quiet. They’re pretty typical
South Enders, grow their gardens and plant orchards, live in co-existence with nature and the nettles. An angry God didn’t kick everyone out of the Garden … or so it seemed.

No, sometimes He just sent neighbors instead. The new couple didn’t like how dark their new property was once they’d moved in and the winter monsoons pulled the shade. At first they tried a little pruning, mostly on the southern side where my pals lived. Mostly my pals’ trees, not the seasonally affected couple’s. Well, mistakes happen, my friends thought, probably just some small confusion concerning property lines, no big deal.

When pruning didn’t let much extra sunshine into their place, the new folks cut all their trees … and a few of the adjoining neighbors. My friends’ old cedar was felled while they were out working so imagine their surprise finding a favorite cedar laying in their yard. Words were exchanged. The new couple claimed the trees were on their property, they’d even moved the old survey markers to help prove their contention.More words flew, but post-logging, and those trees would only take 100 years to grow back. My pals hired a survey anyway and their neighbors served them with summonses. For trespassing on their newly expropriated property and also for harassing their kids.

Lawyers were hired, money began to leave faster than trees, a judge asked the couple why they’d filed a suit against one of my friends after the other was acquitted for lack of any evidence, and the husband testified, “because he lives there.” Case dismissed, money lost, peace and tranquility too. The husband put his own non-survey stakes in this week and now my friends wonder what’s next???

There are people who will take an inch, then grab for the mile. The law is an expensive remedy for those like my friends without much money. I don’t advocate taking the law into our own hands, usually, but there are folks who could use a little frontier justice, who thought maybe if we were this gentrified they could take all they wanted while Law and Justice took its own sweet time. They don’t know the South End. But they will shortly.

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It’s hard, ya know, living in these hyper-polarized times. I feel like Shi-ites are taking on the Republicans and the Sunnis are tackling the Democrats. It all feels like Jihad to me, tribal warfare gone viral. Better to fight to the last TV commercial and leave the country nothing but ash. We denigrate the Taliban, but hellfire, we’re becoming just like them. OUR way or a highway riddled with IED’s.

I believe in arguing my beliefs — I’m just not sure I want to fight for them. Last I heard we were a democracy. I even heard we were a Paragon of that form of government. Down on the South End we’re split about 50/50. Half are card carrying GOP and the other half are cannabis smoking commie leftists. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. That other half isn’t all artists.

But here’s the point. We live down her on this skinny-ass end of the island and life is way easier when we get along rather than take up arms against the folks we disagree with. Hellfire, I disagree with most everybody, even my friends. Doesn’t mean I want to wage war. I got a pen, not a gun … and like they say, at least those of us not in the NRA, it’s mightier than the sword. An AK-47, maybe not.

I say potato, you say tomahto. Let’s make a salad and call a truce. I’ve fought a few battles with the folks across the street. But … we just put in a davit together down at the bulkhead and we use it to launch our boats for crabbing and fishing. I admit, I had to compromise a lot to pay to use their trail, the one I had originally been granted beach rights for when the developer cleared the woods for 23 lots back in 1980. But the value of peace in the neighborhood is far more than my yearly dues.

They’re good folks, really, and I’m probably so-so. Still, I like getting along. I don’t have to agree with them. I don’t have to join their political party. All I have to do is go to the neighborhood picnic they’re kind enough to invite us to. Or they can come to our parties. Whatever we pay in dues is way cheaper than ammunition would cost these days. Plus, it feels like a neighborhood, not a warzone. Something to be said for that…..

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The mizzus said to me the other night, fed up and frustrated by folks’ disinterest in History, she was thinking of taking up pottery. She’s invested 30 years down at the Stanwoodopolis Hysterical Society and she feels like she’s swimming against an outgoing tide and no longer seeing shore. I know the feeling, but instead of helpful advice, consoling warbles or another pep talk, I said ‘Pottery? You think art will be any easier??”

I spoze she could make useful items. Make them aesthetically pleasing and add another cultural layer to the nettle farm here. Maybe sell a few downtown when the house and gardens are cluttered, barter with the neighbors, eventually market to the nurseries and galleries, set up the website and the advertising strategies, sell local and then watch Chinese imports undercut her beyond even paying for her clay.

Most folks don’t value what she does or what she might want to do. They don’t value artists or their art, history or historians, writers or literature, musicians or their songs. Folks who hope to make a living that way won’t. Nine times out of ten. Maybe 99 times out of 100. I could bitch and moan — and oh, baby, I do! — but to what avail?

The trick in life is to do what you love. If you need to make money too, good luck to ya. This society values money. Winners. American Idol or the NBA. You love history, you are one of the lucky few, however. Most people never find one damn thing they can be passionate about. That’s why we invented television and You-Tube. They don’t have anything better to do, nothing that fills their void with passion or joy or the sheer love of that thing that possesses them.

But the people who make music, who write poetry, who tell our histories, who make art, who dance and sing and celebrate, ask them if they needed to be paid to do it. Ask them if money was the reason. They do it to sing, to dance, to paint, to tell stories, to remember history. They are, without a doubt, the richest people on the planet. Starving artists? I don’t think so — they breathe the very air for food.

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