The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Cactus Jack

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Well, buckaroos, it’s that time once again when the call of the cacti beckons this old claimjumper and the urge to hightail it down to the land of sidewinders and scorpions, gila monsters and Republicans becomes too strong to ignore. So I’m packing my kit and heading down to Arizona for a little road tripping on the red dirt backroad where only the border patrols know my name.

I don’t know Arizona much and mercifully the reverse is true. Back in the ‘70’s I plowed through and I wasn’t much impressed. But let’s be honest, we both must’ve mellowed by now and I’m willing to give the state another chance. I bet that rude waitress at the Flagstaff truck stop is a great grandma by now, maybe votes Democratic, collects her Social Security and dreams of jackalopes on the high prairie, not illegal immigrants. She doesn’t remember the longhaired hippie kid forty years ago. Although … I remember her.

Arizona’s like the South for me. Should’ve let it go back in the 1860’s and Arizona, we could still cut Mexico a deal, throw in the Alamo too for a few pesos, good riddance. I’m going down to reconnoiteur, not do a market analysis. I’m going to try my best to avoid Phoenix and the Snowbird Trailer Parks. Probably won’t go near the border, but … Tucson looks interesting and a buddy’s moving down by Bisbee.

Mostly I want to see the state top to bottom, left to right, up and down, in and out. Gives you a chance to take a breather . You deserve it — I know, I’m a blabbermouth and a chatterbox. Enjoy the peace and quiet, walk the beach, go down to the park. I’ll be back, tanned and rested. Or … detained and arrested. Either way, I’ll report back.

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The Katmandu Kite shop opened up down at the long-shuttered Suds and Duds Laundromat. Katmandu Kite isn’t a kite store, its name means higher than a Katmandu Kite and they sell cannabis products. The Barker Brothers, Tom and Harold, both in their 50’s, figured it was the investment opportunity of a lifetime, deducing, I guess, us South enders had been waiting decades for legal marijuana to hit a retail store near us. What we’d been waiting for was another laundromat, maybe re-open the Tyee Store and why not, while we’re making a Wish List, bring in a decent little tavern and spare us the DUI’s getting home at night from our favorite watering holes.

On opening day a few of us curious lookee-loos rolled in to see what was behind the gated windows and the concrete block walls. Tom and Harold had painted the blocks, not green like you might expect, but an inconspicuous grey. Legal or not, they wanted a Stealth presence, apparently. ‘C’mon in guys,’ Harold piped up when we cracked open the steel door with KATMANDU KITE nicely lettered in mauve blockprint. In one of the barred windows a neon OPEN stood out like Christmas lights in June. Display cabinets had hand blown glass pipes and bongs, baggies of exotic strains, candies and drops, edibles and smokables.

Two Toke was in 7th heaven. At least until he saw the prices. ‘My god, Harold,’ he whined, ‘I’d have to get a job to buy from you boys.’ Tom said, ‘Well, it’s gonna shake down soon. Still got some bugs. Not enough product and the medical dispensaries undersell us but that’ll get sorted out. I’d give you some samples, ya know, but the State frowns on that.’

We all fumbled around awhile, a little embarrassed we weren’t filling up shopping bags with ‘product’, but finally Dotty Bingham and a gaggle of her friends hauled in, giving us an escape. I wish Tom and Harold all the luck in the world, I really do, but hellfire, they’re selling us at twice the price what we’ve been growing since the ‘60’s. Maybe they’ve been sampling their own merchandise….

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My buddy Sam lives in a dilapidated house down by the newly opened Katmandu Kite Shop and no, it isn’t a kite store, it’s a recreational marijuana outlet. Sam’s place sits back in the nettled interior, down a dead end dirt road near the old trout pond that once held trout but got dredged back in the early ‘80’s on one debauched weekend that ended my trout fishing on the South End.

Sam’s been living the bachelor life since his wife left him. She’d grown weary of the power being turned off for non-payment and the back taxes on the place reaching critical mass and since neither of them were willing to work, they played ‘chicken’ with each other, hoping the other would swerve first back into the job market. No way was Sam going back to wage slavery so ultimately Bobbie packed her things, left a short and not-so-sweet note and headed back down to an old boyfriend in Eugene, Oregon who at least worked part-time driving schoolbus.

Sam says he never saw it coming. I believe him, not because all the signs weren’t pointing inexorably toward a dissolution, but because Sam doesn’t have peripheral vision. He would have to hit a sign head-on. In fact, he didn’t find Bobbie’s kiss-off letter until four days after she left. Which isn’t as myopic as you might think. Sam is a Hoarder. His house is like one of those ant farms I had as a kid, nothing but tunnels, stuff stacked along the paths head high, trails leading to the bed or the bathroom or through the kitchen to the stove on one side, the fridge down a different path.

Bobbie kept the piles slightly more passable, but now that she’s gone, the tunnels have narrowed. Nothing much gets thrown away, but stuff apparently is coming in constantly, at least by my observation after not seeing Sam for a few months. The folks who dreamed up ‘planned obsolescence’ never counted on the Sams who keep the broken crap and live in their own midden. Another year, I figure he’ll run out of room completely. I don’t know how many Sams are out there, but I have to wonder if this isn’t why Sears, after a century, is going broke.

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HOMO SAPIENS IS A GOAL, NOT A DESCRIPTION

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An old friend of ours recently wrote to say he was trying to test drive some Buddhism. Be Here Now. Be in the moment. Pay a little attention. What my old man called Wake the Hell Up! …when we were what he referred to as ‘glommy’. My response, typically smartass, was something to the effect, what ELSE you gonna do? We’re paying attention to SOMETHING, even if it’s dopey.

You want to update your Facebook, well, I guess that’s your world. You want to watch Fox News all day, I figure you like being pissed off incessantly. Your choice. What I think is the world, your universe, is pretty much those thoughts in your head all the livelong day. Change your thinking and you change the world. Course, you could still get hit by a meteor coming right out of left field and WHAP! Brand new day. Or not.

We mostly live in a virtual world now. The kids already put down earnest money on the mortgage. Us old farts are working on how to forward e-mail jokes, but the computer’s tractor-beam is reeling us in, slow at first, but even if we never notice, accelerating all the time.

On the South End we still prefer the Old World, the one where we let nature and weather have a say in what turns and twists our day takes, the one where we still throw ourselves into a building project or a repair job or an art project or planting a garden, what I think of as the creative process, but is really just an attempt to do more than just Go with the Flow, maybe actually try to bend the river. God isn’t the only dude who believes in creation, not down here, no disrespect. You ask me — and, as usual, I know you didn’t — a good religion should ask for more than just paying attention.

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