The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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For the past 30 years or so the mizzus and me throw a big New Year’s Party here on the South End, partly so we don’t get to know the sheriff’s deputies any better than we do now, which is what we tell the neighbors, but the real reason is a bit more shrouded in the mists of lost memories.  I got a call today from Brent, an old friend now in Alaska,  and it triggered a couple of neurons into firing spasmodically  once more and voila, I was back in, oh, 1985 down at the shack with just a few of us struggling mightily to make it to midnight so we could toast the new year and pass out in our bunks.

My brother was here with his wife and we had Brent and Liz visiting from Portland.   My brother is what you’d call a spark plug for party stuff.  Meaning, when conversations lag, he springs into instant action.  ‘Let’s go around the room,’ he says, ‘and tell what the best day of the year was for each of us.’  So Brent goes first and he relates a warm summer day when he and his collie were at the park and the sun was shining and the Frisbees were sailing and it was just a golden day,  a boy and his pooch, fetching the Frisbee.  Not maybe what my brother had in mind, I bet, but just a hippie dippy zen day that stood out for Brent more than some birthday or Christmas or the day he got a raise or the usual dopey stuff  we trot out when you play Name Your Best Day.

I don’t remember what my favorite day was.  I don’t remember Karen’s or my brother’s or my brother’s wife’s favorite day.  But I remember Liz’s turn, Brent’s girlfriend who I’d know a long time.  A real long time.  A way too long a time.   And as the clock ticked glacially toward 1986, gears needing oil, glasses waiting for that toast and then goodnight everybody, my brother sez, ‘Okay, Liz, what was your favorite day?’  And to this day I can remember Liz turning to Brent who was rubbing his collie’s head, probably still warm in his remembrance of a summer day in the park, and the clock’s hands stopping forever, the wood stove throwing a heat nothing like what she was focusing on poor Brent with a laser look that would burn through titanium like it was cheap plastic, and our glasses with champagne broke in the sudden stillness before she said, ‘My favorite day …. (and the ‘my’ was a small caliber bullet)  My favorite day was the day we got back together, Brent.’

Maybe you’ve had a New Year’s ‘Party’ like that.  The room emptying of air and sound and mirth, as if a stopper had been pulled from the tub of our happiness and no matter how hard you try, and Brent desperately tried, that stopper won’t go back in and all the merriment drains out by your feet and deep down in your cold curling guts you know, you know absolutely this is not the way you wanted to ring in the next year.  You know what they mean by ill-omened now and all the months to come you will dread the next New Years’ Eve the way you would dread death itself.   And of course Liz and Brent broke up and Brent moved to the furthest corner of the earth and my brother admitted maybe that wasn’t the best holiday icebreaker of all time and we decided either to forsake New Year’s altogether or bring so many people in we couldn’t possibly go around the room and play parlor games like Stab Your Lover.

And that is how the South End got its gala New Year’s Extravaganza Potluck and BYOB Party.  And of course, you’re invited!  Unless you got some serious issues with your girlfriend or boyfriend, lover or husband, wife or mistress.  Then I think you got a new parlor game for you and a few select friends.  Happy New Year anyway.

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Walter was up on his soapbox at the South End Senile Center where he was chowing down on the Thursday meatloaf special, mashed potatoes, gravy and gray peas on the side, his favorite, but today he’d barely touched his food. A little busy promoting his favorite lobbying group, the National Rifle Association. “When guns are outlawed,” he shouted to a table of us hungry pacifists, “only terrorists will have guns.”

A husband and wife had just killed 14 people down in Pasadena and Walter had heard, driving over, that they were Muslims. “Terrorists!” he shouted.

“Oh, stop, Walter,” Randy objected with a forkful of mashed potatoes held at the ready. “Where was the outrage when that Christian guy shot up the Planned Parenthood clinic last week? Murder’s murder, okay?”

“You lily livered liberals,” Walter alliterated sadly, sinking back into his seat as his meatloaf grew colder, “you think Muslims believe in peace and love? Gimme a break, Randy. It’s time to wake up and smell the Koran, buddy.”

Two Toke Tom started to respond until I put a jab in his side and shook my head. “Don’t get started, T.T. I want to be able to digest this lunch before dinner. Let him wind down.” Tom chuckled and grinned as he shoveled in a load of potatoes studded with peas.

Walter wolfed a mouthful of meatloaf. “We either fight em over there or we fight em here,” he muttered with a full face.

“Who we fighting, Walt?” Teddy asked, putting his tray across from Walter’s and parking himself.

“We’re fighting the Muslims, for chrissake,” Walter exploded, slapping mashed spuds across the DMZ. Teddy looked around at the rest of us who’d gone Silent Night, Holy Night, then he grinned. “Lot of Muslims, Walter. Billions. That’s a lot of enemies.” He hefted a slab of meatloaf. “Comfort food,” he fairly intoned. “Course, I don’t think there’s even one on the South End, not sure. You know any?”

Walter spluttered, Walter went red in the face. “Any?” Teddy asked again sweetly. Walter shook his head. Teddy went to work on the potatoes and gravy. “I say we declare victory,” he said cheerfully, “and get down to business. Lunch.” For a few minutes we all ate in silence, a blessed Christmas truce.

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Back in the less consumer-driven days of early Christmas, we South Enders would hang our stockings by the chimney with great care. Mostly so they wouldn’t catch fire…I mean, we used that chimney for heat. How Santa was going to get down the brick chute without scorching those red pajamas of his, us young’uns didn’t have a clue. So we worried about St. Nick. Well, mostly we worried he wouldn’t leave us anything at all while he was hustled off to the nearest burn unit. Our parents told us not to lose any sleep over it – Santa probably had fire retardant uniforms. Oh, right, like Kris Kringle moonlighted as a chemist half the year.

But Santa always did seem to find the South End on Christmas … which didn’t help to explain the half empty stockings and the paucity of presents under the tree every year at our house. We kids just figured Santa had checked his stupid list, probably twice, and we were blacklisted on the NAUGHTY side once again. We even used to leave cookie bribes and a jug of something savory to drink when he showed up. It was odd how the jug was always empty and still, the stockings were sadly deficient. Pa always said the reindeer must’ve been thirsty and we’d say, hey, if Donder and Blitzen could find their way here and down a burning chimney with a 6 inch hole to the woodstove, how come St. Nick couldn’t find us? And Ma would give Pa a dirty look and say, something was Blitzen all right, but it wasn’t the reindeer….

Santa finds the South End pretty easily now, I’m telling you. Come Christmas morning it looks like a China R Us down the middle of the living room, barely room to squeeze near the tree. Nowadays we don’t leave Santa a plate of cookies. He expects an ATM machine and a Visa Card. Christmas down on the South End lasts and lasts – about 12 easy payments, then it starts all over ….

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Even down here at the tail end of civilization, us South Enders have been hearing talk lately about Income Inequality. Cap’n Billy down at the Marina claims it’s nothing less, this talk, than an assault on the Rich. “The Losers,” he declares, knocking the ash from his briar on the pier pilings, “they want to pull the successful down to their level. Take their money and give it to the freeloaders on welfare.” He beats his pipe the way he’d like to beat some sense into Jimmy the Geek who made the mistake of arguing with Billy.

“All I’m saying, Bill, is these folks didn’t get all the money cause they worked 1000 times harder — they got tax breaks. I work for Boeing but Boeing got billions to stay in the state. I call that corporate welfare. Workers are getting their wages cut while the stockholders and the executives, hell Bill, they’re getting fat.”

Cap’n Billy is getting Hot. “I worked hard for my pay, dammit. I don’t need you pencil pushers telling me I ought to give part of it back so some lazy do-nothing can sit home and watch TV all day when the government gives him his Handout. What’s your gripe, anyway, Jim, you’re doing okay? You one of those bleeding heart socialists?”

And so it went. Jim and I walked the gangplank up to the Pilot House for a cold one, admittedly a little early, but sometimes you just got to cool off. Loretta was bartending, took our order and when she parked two pints in front of us, asked if we’d care to give to the Food Bank where she volunteers two days a week. “I’ll give two beers,” I said, quite the comic, but Jim took out his wallet all serious like and fished out a twenty.

“Thanks for doing this, Loretta,” he said. So of course I felt like the Grinch. I gave her a ten. “Expensive beers,” I joked. Jimmy shook his head. “We’re lucky dogs,” he said, taking a long slow sip. The bar’s Christmas lights twinkled off his glasses.

We clinked pints. “Here’s to the winners,” I toasted, ever the jokester. Jimmy grinned, just as Cap’n Billy pushed through the door.

“Loretta,” Jimmy cried, “get the Cap’n a beer! It’s on us.” Bill waved him off, but Loretta poured him one anyway. “Merry Christmas, Bill,” Jimmy said. “Merry Christmas, boys,” Bill said back. “Merry Christmas one and all!” Loretta warbled. We all four sat for awhile, listening to the corny Jingle Bells Loretta had on the radio over the bar. Maybe it wasn’t the ghost of Christmas Future, but down here on the South End, it would have to do.

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