The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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The South End Suds and Duds, our local laundromat and gossip center, advertises as OPEN 24/7, but for us Maytagless residents, we know it’s open maybe only 5 or 6 days, the other two they’re closed for repairs and plumbing catastrophes now that Wanda , the current owner, lost her husband/repair guy to Cindy, one of the regulars, at least until she ran off for a new life in Phoenix. Wanda took Fred’s betrayal hard, especially considering Cindy was young enough to be their daughter. If she was a bitter chainsmoking woman before, she doubled down after. And consequently lost interest in the Suds and Duds.

I happened to be washing a week’s worth of dirty clothes and sheets when our washer refused to drain. Wanda was interviewing Tommy Wilson for the position of Head Roto-Rooter. Tommy barely knows which end is the working end of a toilet plunger, but Wanda obviously was short on applicants. “I got a guy yesterday,” she said through a haze of Pall Mall smoke, “probably illegal. I said I’d need to see a green card. He could barely speak English. Said he had a family to feed. I told him I was hiring him, not his whole damn family.”

Tommy swore. “Takin our jobs. They’ll own America before long.” Tommy’s jobs disappeared a long time ago. If Wanda hired him, it would break a streak of decades. “We need to deport these people,” he growled darkly. “Just leeches on the rest of us.” Wanda shot him a long exclamation point of smoke. For once I kept my mouth shut. It’s hellish enough doing the laundry here without debating the owners and clientele. I vowed to get my washer fixed ASAP or die trying.

Tommy lasted about half a week, near as I could tell, probably until the first breakdown. Wanda hired an hombre named Carlos to replace him. They say he can fix about anything. Except maybe Wanda’s broke heart and bitter life. I bought a used washer at the 2nd hand appliance place up north. A very polite Hispanic kid helped me load it into my truck. I noticed he spoke perfect English.

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I was hitting the local pawnshops today, everyone within about 50 miles, looking for two of my guitars our favorite drug addict down the road stole from me. The island cops know who stole them, I know who stole them …. And apparently that’s enough for them. But it doesn’t really work for me.

The pawnshop I went to first knew my thief — even went to school with him. And yeah, he comes in fairly frequently, no doubt with half my neighbors’ goods. Looking around the shop, I realized that what we have here is a legal ‘fencing’ operation. You don’t have a serial number on that stereo or television set or rifle or jewelry, well, it’s just not possible to say definitively that item is yours, sir. You see our predicament.

Okay, I see someone’s predicament. I got cops who have caught my thief with stolen goods more than once, but don’t haul him in. I got pawnshops taking in those goods and reselling them. I got a guy in my neighborhood who needs money for heroin. I guess the predicament is all mine.

Two Toke Tom tells me I’m too materialistic, too hung up on my possessions. “You got nothing, you got nothing to lose,” he intones, smiling his Cheshire Cat grin.

“Won’t be long at this rate,” I reply, knowing I don’t have a whole lot worth stealing. Old TV, 50 year old stereo, lawnmower on its last legs, camera maybe, computer. Maybe I should just have a garage sale and save my burglar any further effort.

We’ve had more than a couple of addicts on the South End lately. 90% of the crime. I say give them their fix. Make it legal, dispense it at the clinic, provide clean syringes. The war on drugs? We lost it long ago. I’m running the white flag up the chimney. The cops already have. And yeah, sure, I’ll feel sorry for the pawn boys. But … you can see my predicament, can’t you?

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Cold Turkey

Sad to say, I gotta take a leave of absence from the blogosphere. Gonna head down to Hood River on the Columbia for some R&R.  The R&R is for you readers.  Give you a break.  If you need a fix, go back in the archives and pull up an old rant from a year or two ago.  If that doesn’t work, turn on Fox News or try methadone.  Me, I’m hoping to unplug from the 24/7 Trump tweets and the Benghazi revelations.  Should do us all a world of good….

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Buried in today’s obituary column was the profoundly sad news that the Playboy centerfold is dead. Or at least a completely nude body has been sent to the graveyard of pornographic history. Airbrushed, lipsticked, coiffed and embalmed. Teenage boys of the 50’s and 60’s went into deep mourning, their dreams of one day living in silk pajamas and a smoking jacket all day, every day, surrounded by a bevy of heaving bosoms by the pools and the hot tubs of their own mansions, dashed forever.

Hugh Hefner, with his stockpiles of Viagra and Cialis, has thrown in the towel. The bunnies will use it to cover themselves now, relegated to the status of pin-up girls, coquettish and demure. Maybe it’s the old raconteur’s way of atoning for bringing the world non-stop hardcore internet porn, sex stripped of elegance and glamour, returned to the raw basics of grunt and rut. Or maybe he knew he couldn’t compete with global orgiastic excess.

Old Hef brought sex out of the closet back in those prudish, frigid years of Ike and Nixon, surrounded it with literature and essays, packaged it in glitter and sold it on the newsstand next to Life and Good Housekeeping and National Geographic. Even the women’s right movement couldn’t shame Hugh from making them a toy, an object, a living sexdoll.

It’s a dark day when sex can no longer sell a sex magazine. If we’re not careful, violence won’t monetize movies and video games either. Political correctness will once again rule the land of the bland, home of the fleeced, and the preachers of purity will return again to their pious pulpits. And, of course, worst of all, us adolescent boys might finally have to grow up.

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Taking the First Bite

It has come to the Crab Cracker’s attention that a petition to boycott Halloween this year has been circulating since summer. Supported by Pastor Paul of the Little Church of the Stingless Nettles, it decries demon worship, gross-out costumes, sugar gluttony, crass commercialization and yoga, particularly Hot Yoga, what the Reverend calls Satan’s Sauna. The anti-goblin signatures numbered in the many dozens.

The Mabana Institute, the South End’s not quite non-partisan think tank, has been conducting its own polls regarding Halloween this past month, according to Prof. Lawrence Glewkose, former director of the American Candy Lobby and now a permanent board member of the Institute. Prof. Glewkose reported that in their admittedly non-scientific poll of children at South End Elementary, 69% were in favor of Halloween as a national holiday while 11% supported having 2 or more Halloweens a year. 11% of the survey responders believed Halloween was already an ongoing event 365 days a year, judging by the proliferation of zombie movies and candy machines and their siblings’ Goth wardrobes. 9% couldn’t read the survey.

According to Joan Hypoglyseemly, spokeswoman for the Pro-Diabetes Foundation, anti-Halloween sentiment is based on  superstition and fear of high fructose sugar perpetuated by the ignorant and the dietary obsessed. “What these people need,” she suggested, “is a Paleo diet exorcism followed by the first ten episodes of Walking Dead.

Prof. Glewkose, unmoved by her sense of humor, suggested she might consider removing her witch costume next interview. Needless to say, Halloween started early on the previously zombie-free South End. According to a Stanwood General Hospital nurse, Prof. Glewkose will recover from his bite wounds, but probably not in time to take his kids Trick or Treating this year.

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