The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Opportunity occasionally comes knocking for most of us.  Trouble with us South Enders, we don’t often answer the door.  You take Wild Bill, the South End String Band’s former bass player.  He and a couple of  buddies started up their own advertising agency down in San Francisco back in the heydays of the Grateful Dead, rented themselves an office and hired a girl Friday.  The boys came back from lunch one fine California day and their secretary Shelly said there’d been a guy in to see them, Steve somebody or other, who was starting his own company and wanted to sit down and talk publicity, promotion, advertising, just what Wild Bill and his cohorts were in business to do.

Hot damn, a client!!  They told Shelly to make an appointment to meet them at Bill’s apartment that night.  There was a ’49ers game on Monday Night Football and they figured they’d mix a little pleasure with business.  Their new client, no doubt, would get a kick out of drinking some beer and rooting for his home team, and maybe at half time they could kick around some advertising strategies before the second half kickoff.  Steve came by and the boys put a beer in his hand, told him to have a seat, kick back and enjoy the game.  Well, quite a few beers later, the game being close and all, they never really got much strategizing in.  Steve sipped at his beer, mostly to be friendly, but obviously he wasn’t much of a drinker and worse, he didn’t seem much interested in who won the football game or maybe he didn’t even understand the damn game.  Odd guy, real quiet, sober as a judge.  Finally the boys pretty much ignored him completely and by the 3rd quarter Steve excused himself, thanked them for the beer and said he probably should get on home, he had work to do.

Haw haw, work to do??  On a Monday Night Football night?  With San Francisco playing?? The boys just shook their heads when he’d gone.  Probably some poor gomer with a sure-to-fail business and they were probably lucky not to waste time on a losing bet.  They popped a few more brewskis and settled in for the 4th quarter.

Next day Shelly asked the bedraggled football fans how the meeting went with Steve.  Okay, they said, odd guy.  Great game, though, the ’49ers pulled it out in the last quarter.  “You want me to call Mr. Jobs back and make another appointment?” Shelly asked.  Naw, the boys said, Steve’s on his own and good luck to him.  Haw haw.

Last time I looked Apple was the biggest company in the world, Steve did okay without the boys and Wild Bill ended up in the South End String Band.  Nobody knows what happened to Shelly.

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The Flatheads were holding court at the Diner the day after the FDA approved the women’s new sex drug.  Lined up like an ad for an automobile museum, their Nashes and Oldsmobiles, Packards and Pontiacs gleamed in this summer’s endless sun.  Tork ‘The Wrench’ Anderson was musing over his Santa Fe Omelette how life was going to be nitro-charged from here on out.  “I may have to start jogging again,” he declared to the assembled geriatrics, “just to keep up with the mizzus.”

Randy, who once owned the O-Zi-Ya Body Shoppe before he sold it and retired, put down his second cup of decaf coffee and shook his head sadly.  “After my last heart attack I decided to slow down on the bedroom.  Too much stress on my ticker.”  Freddie howled from the next table.  “I bet Cindy thought her prayers were finally answered.”  Randy closed his eyes and nodded.  “I don’t think the pink pills are for her.”

Brenda breezed through the back room about then with a coffee pot.  “Whaddaya think, Brenda?” Joey asked when she poured him a refill.  “Gonna be a big run on that women’s Viagra?”  Brenda stopped, all eyes on her as if she were the Dr. Phil of the Women’s Health Movement.  “That depends, I guess.”  “On what?” Freddie asked, holding out his empty mug, big grin on his.

“If you’re hoping a little pill is gonna make you old farts look good, I got some bad news for you boys.  You’re expecting a miracle.  It’s like those cars outside there.  They’re waxed up and ready for show, but you know and I know, what’s under the hood isn’t much.”

Ralph said, “Ouch, Brenda, that’s kinda cruel.”

“Sorry,” she laughed, “but you did ask.”  She held the coffee pot up. “More octane, fellas???”

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Copulation Merit Badge

Slim Jim was a little wound up at the Pilot House’s happy hour.  Course, it was two hours PAST the happy one and Jim was paying full price for 16 oz.’s of bitterness and I don’t mean IPA’s.  “I’m pulling Little Jimmy out of the Scouts,” he was hollering to Two Toke Tom, Guitar Bob and me at the adjoining table.  “Before you know it, they’ll have Sodomy as a merit badge.  I mean, Jeez, where does this end?  I tell you what, I’ve had it up to here.”

Up to here evidently was his pie hole where he was now pouring down his 4^th pint.  Guitar Bob’s kid Billy was a member of the South End Troop 17 sponsored by the Little Chapel in the Ravine.  The Little Chapel had considered pulling out after the Scouts decided the time had come to accept gays, but the deacons couldn’t reach a decision without tearing the membership apart.

“You gonna let Billy stay in?” Jim asked Bob.  “You aren’t worried he’ll end up some limp wrist with all the perverts we got these days?  What kind of father …?”

Bob held up a hand in a stop sign.  “Settle down, Jim.  It isn’t the end of manhood as we know it.  It’s the same troop.  You know all these kids.  And Phil’s a good scoutmaster.  What the hell are you cranking yourself up for?”

“Holy crap, Bob,” Jim spluttered, half rising from his seat.  “These are our kids’ lives, ya know?  We didn’t send them to Boy Scouts to earn Fairy Badges, we expected them to learn how to use knives and hatchets.  The way we did, remember?”

“Billy just got his computer merit badge, Jim.  I don’t care if he learns how to chop wood in the 21^st century.  We’re not Cro Magnons.  No offense, Skeeter,” he grinned, looking my way.

“Me like fire.  Me cut wood,” I grunted. So did Jim.  “Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the damn Scouts.  They don’t care about teaching Manhood.  They’re all a bunch of pansies, you ask me.”

“We didn’t,” Two Toke said.

“Look who’s talking,” Jim grumbled, “a guy who never had a kid, probably couldn’t if he wanted to.”

Tom, instead of taking offense, just laughed.  “If I’d known I could get sex-ed in Boy Scouts, I’d’ve joined.  But isn’t that what you’re worried about?”

Jim snorted in disgust, swilled down his half full glass and got up to leave.  On his way to the door he turned back to us.  “You three faggots are exactly what’s wrong with this country.”

Two Toke shook his head sadly, but Guitar Bob laughed.  “Love you, man,” he said for all the bar to hear before throwing him a kiss.  Love on the South End comes in many disguises….

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Half my neighborhood’s been for sale for years, mostly since the Great Recession when, unfortunately for the neighbors, prices fell through the floor, rolled down the bluff and laid there on the beach waiting for the tide to lift them back up here. It’s been a long wait. The suicide rate at ReFlux Realty is a closely guarded secret, but it’s got to be right up there with stock market day traders this past week.

Obama’s fault, no doubt, but leaving partisan politics aside, the economy seems to be on the upswing. Which is NOT Obama’s doing, of course … but slap me upside the head with a left wing newspaper for suggesting it sure couldn’t be Congress.

Whatever it is, the houses across the road started selling last month. Frank put his on the market and by the time he could crack his first beer, the place had SOLD. The old Bucklin Store sold about the same hour. Pat’s bluff house sold. Pin’s house on the corner closed. The section 8 million dollar joint on the bluff, the one renters squatted in long after the water was turned off — and, trust me, none of us want to inquire where the ‘waste’ got disposed of — even IT sold. Realtors are digging out of their hasty graves to get in on this bonanza. Zombie Realtors: the movie. They want your listing, not your flesh.

Okay, the want both.

Half our neighborhood is changing. New folks moving in, old friends moving out. I had just mentored them in the intricacies of retirement and now I got a freshman crop to deal with. Me, the geriatric Mr. Chips. These folks paid real bucks for these haciendas, what I guess is the gentrification of the South End, and I won’t see a dime for the education I’m offering. Way of the World, I suppose — certainly the saga of the South End. All I can ask in return for all this shared wisdom of an old banjo whacker is maybe think of the mizzus and me as neighbors, not what they refer to us in the association they got: Out of Platters. O.P.’s. Damn, it makes a person feel … I don’t know … like an outsider. Course, that’s exactly why I came here in the first place. Just didn’t expect folks to follow me here, is all.

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Capitalism succeeds because it combines two primary drives in the human brain: greed and the urge NOT to work for someone else. On the South End most of us tried our hands at employment but came up a little short. Short of a work ethic, short of money, short of tolerance for a Boss. So we did what most desperate, unemployed people do. We started our own business.

Any good STARTING YOUR OWN CORPORATION FOR THE COMPLETE IDIOT book will tell you under-capitalization is the main harbinger of Failure in 90% of startups. Obviously none of us down here bought the book, probably couldn’t afford it. “It takes money to make money.” Page 2, Chapter 1. Folks just figure, I guess, they’ll buy a couple of yaks, breed em, then sell the little yaksters to a clamoring public. They don’t really factor in the yak feed, the vet bills, the yak barn and the yak fences. And they NEVER factor in the publicity campaign to create a viral fever for WANTING or NEEDING a yak. Maybe many yaks.

The other thing they don’t calculate in is how much work self-employment entails. Without overtime. Without benefits. You’re supposed to trade off working for Cap’n. Bligh in return for slaving 80 hours a week for Mr. Wonderful, yourself. Course Mr. Wonderful isn’t issuing paychecks at the beginning. He has yak bills to pay before he pays himself and the debts are growing deeper than yak droppings out in the barnyard.

So it’s little wonder us entrepreneur types, us Job Creators, us Captains of Industry, end up broke, disillusioned and depressed, our dreams shattered, our shacks mortgaged, our divorce rates sky high.

But! By god, we’re South Enders and South Enders don’t quit! Well, okay, we gave up on our capitalist fantasies of entrepreneurial riches. But we stayed true to our vow never to work for the Man again, never to be a cog in the well-greased machinery of some #@*&!!^# company, no sir! If we have to live poor, so be it. If we have to live by our wits, even if that’s a SERIOUS disadvantage, okay. And if anyone out there is looking for a very nice herd of cute yaks, I think we can help you with YOUR dream.

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