The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Down here in the start-up labs of the South End we’ve been printing DNA. Got ourselves some sterile vats full of 4 major amino acid groups, hooked em up to a 3-D printer, ran a USB port to a laptop and went to work experimenting with interesting combinations. Make our own stem cells with unusual variations of chromosomes, another year or two, you’ll see Wal-Mart offering kits for the kids. Make your own sibling! Puppy in a test tube! Fun for the whole family!

Course we’re still working out the bugs, literally sometimes. South Endomex Technologies made a fast mutating paramecium that ran rampant in the dumpster behind their lab a couple months ago. Two or three cats lost more than their allotted 9 lives before Billy Brandon, the night manager, noticed clumps of matted fur behind the building and alerted Frank, South Endomex’s project manager next morning. “Looked like they’d been turned inside out and twisted,” he whispered before giving notice.

Kind of a wake-up call, I guess. They double bag unwanted recombinants now, no point taking unnecessary chances. Not that anyone’s very worried. I mean, what are the odds of escaped life forms surviving in the hostile environment of the nettled South End? Humans barely eke out an existence, what chance does an unstable pile of amino acids have?

Still, always good to err on the side of caution even if the government hasn’t gotten around to clamping down on the profit motive with overly burdensome regulations.     Yet….     Which only makes us all that more inventive. Time, after all, is not on our side. But judging by the influx of venture capital, the potential is nearly unlimited. Forget Silicon Valley. This here is the Next Big Thing. This is the new Garden of Eden, a chance to get it right this time. You want an apple, Adam? Tart or sweet? Red or yellow? With or without seeds? Just punch a program, Big Fella, no need to disobey orders from On High. But … maybe keep an eye out for any odd looking worms. Still got some flies in the ointment….

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I was chatting it up with some of my UpCreek neighbors the other day and we got to arguing whether living Up River was the same as Up Scale. Bayou Bill was making the point that any riverfront property was upscale, no two ways about it. Course, Bayou was undercutting his argument by standing on what was left of his dryrotted, slicker-as-snot porch in front of his 1973 single wide with the lower one third vinyl green with mold or algae or moss or all three. “Up scale,” Little Jimmy was saying, making his point with his second Milwaukee’s Best can, “might not be a description the realtors would come up with on the sales brochure.”

Bayou crumpled his own can and snorted, “What are you talking about, Jimbo? I wouldn’t sell this riverfront paradise for any price under a million.” The boyz talk like this, sort of like their Lottery Dreams, something to fill the conversation between ball games and Wheel of Fortune. Harmless enough, I guess, but not exactly uplifting or educational. Maybe we all live in our fantasy worlds … and that’s okay with me so long as they’re upbeat even if it isn’t a synonym for upscale. Us river folk — at least us up river folk — can use all the optimism we can muster. It’s dark back here, it rains an extra inch every inland mile and there’s no jobs left anywhere near for us moss-backed old timers. If the Oso slide had closed us off from downriver civilization during winter, our suicide and alcohol rates would have been alarming. As it was, illegal fishing and some minor deer poaching kept us occupied while the State was preoccupied with re-opening the highway.

Course now that the road to Arlington and Gomorrah is passable once more, Bayou figures his real estate values are soaring to stratospheric heights. Life is good, the river isn’t flooding and the boyz are getting richer drinking cheap canned beer. It’s a fool’s paradise all right. That, or a drunkard’s dream.

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More Tales from UpCreek

My old shack looks east into the mountains and across the river where two or three fishing cabins still sit perched on the bank. Last year’s spring melt after a week of unseasonably warm weather and heavy rains turned the river into a rage that ate at the banks across from me and finally, one afternoon, sloughed off one of the cabins, Harry Watson’s, a Seattle attorney who’d come here since before me, and sent it into a log strewn Waring blender where I watched it go over sideways, hesitate a minute or so, then collapse in on itself. The boarded up windows turned beseechingly toward the sky, the front door popped off its hinges, the roof tore away in two parts and Harry’s cabin set sail briefly before sinking from view. It was a sobering sight to behold.

Harry came up to inspect for damage a few days later and I drove around, took the bridge and found him staring at the gash where his house had sat for 50 years. ‘I’m real sorry about this, Hank,” I said when I came up beside him standing over what must have seemed like an open grave. “Lot of memories in that old cabin,” he muttered mournfully.

I tried to console him, of course, said hey, you’ll rebuild another one, a better one, but we both knew the county would never grant a building permit that close to the river now. 1960, sure, go ahead, what’s it to us? Your loss if the river eats it and who cares where the outhouse drains? It all washes out to sea so let the Down River folks in the next county worry about septic overflow. We’re UpCreek people and maybe that’s what gives us an Uppity Attitude. But times change, not as fast as the river, but they change.

Trouble is, Harry’s no spring chicken. My guess is Harry’s fishing days are pretty much over. I just hope it’s only the fishing that’s ended for him. I sure don’t need to see another obit photo with a guy and his damn big fish he caught 30 years ago.

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The South End Slammers are the local Roller Derby queens, mean mamas on ball bearings, elbows sharp as their tongues. Jammin Janice, by day a demure office secretary down at Windy Rear Realty’s south office, captain’s the squad with an attitude like an unfed piranha. The Slammers are a no-holds barred bunch of bruisers with a volcano of pent-up aggression they unleash on their opponents as they hurtle around the maple track that’s canted for increased speeds on an oval circuit. Cheryl is a teller at the local branch of Coastal Bank 5 days a week, but weekends she’s the spearhead for the Slammmer’s feared Flying Wedge, a vicious phalanx of boiling estrogen mowing down any and all opposing skaters too slow or witless to get out of the way. Elbows hammer chests, bodies slam bodies, skates are used the way a mallet is used to tenderize meat.

Paula is the point getter, small and wiry and able to stoop low and slide under or around the opponents’ blockade. She’s their best Jammer, lapping with graceful strides on her custom made skates like a dancer on bearings. Paula waitresses at the Diner part-time and if some of the patrons mistake her quiet demeanor for mousey modesty, she has a tongue fast as her trademark passing maneuvers. You want a refill on that coffee, mister, you learn to say please. And you better try a thank you when you get it.

The Slammers are ranked #1 this season. For good reason. I ran into Betty, the team’s burly Blocker, the other night. Not many Jammers get by Betty. And if they do, they’ll pay for it next time around. She was at the Pilot House Lounge ordering her 3rd whiskey on the rocks. “Nice shiner,” I remarked, sliding onto the adjoining stool. Her eye was swollen half shut and she had a bandage over her right eyebrow. The whiskey was probably half painkiller. Betty laughed. “You should’ve seen the other skater when I got back up and caught her on the next rotation. She’ll think twice next time she elbows this mother.”

“Betty,” I said, “that’s true of ALL of us.” The Slammers, like I might’ve mentioned, aren’t to be trifled with on the rink or off the rink.

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Freddie was holding the podium at the Diner yesterday, practically setting up the proverbial soapbox, you’d think he was running for Congress, nothing new there, not for us citizens of the sectarian South End. New England has its town meetings — we have breakfasts at the Diner. Sheila, the current owner, tolerates it for awhile, but if newcomers are in attendance, she limits floor time for speeches. To NO time…. Business, after all, is business, and Freddie can give his stump speeches down at the Pilot House Lounge where alcohol fuels the debates and the debates fuel alcohol consumption. Sheila’s selling coffee and omeletes without the salsa of politics.

“What ABOUT it, Sheila?” Fred hollers across the formica tabletops, the tables about half full this late in the morning. The Hispanics have come and gone — they have work to do and Fred’s filling his retirement years with coffee refills apparently. “You gonna feel okay serving gays? You got that sign that says you have the right to refuse service to anyone, how about the government telling you you got to serve criminals and perverts and terrorists? How about no shoes, no shirt, no morals, hey?”

Al, over on Table 4, spoons his 4th pack of sugar into his coffee and asks, “What’s next, Fred? No blacks? You gonna brink back a Colored water fountain again for gays? “

“It’s about freedom, Al. Religious freedom. The Bible says men on men, well, that’s why we got a Hell, know what I mean?” Al knows very well what he means and decides the debate isn’t worth ruining breakfast, which Anita serves up right then. He throws a hand up in dismissal and digs into his biscuits and gravy.

“Whadday think, Sheila?” Fred persists. “You okay with the government forcing patrons down your throat?”

“Freddie,” Sheila says, laughing, “you are SO 1950’s. Ike is dead. The Cold War is over. Women can vote. And maybe you never noticed, but plenty of gays eat here. You just never can tell, can you?”

Fred took a slow look around the Diner. When his gaze settled on me, I nodded and blew him a kiss. I figure Fred needs all the love he can get ….

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