The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Heaven — Free Admission

More and more of us South Enders are losing their religion, don’t ask me why. I just read a survey that showed a quarter of us don’t believe in a Supreme Being, too bad for Donald Trump. That’s way up since the last survey. But here’s the odd part: the number of us who don’t believe in God but believe in an afterlife doubled. Faith based Heaven, I suppose, or maybe just bad logic, a trend that seems to be more and more prevalent.

Down at the Little Church in the Ravine, Rev. Paul makes it a point most every Sunday to exhort his flock to eschew sin. Live a holy life, he preaches, and if you mess up, ask the Good Lord for forgiveness. Believe on the Lord, he says, or surely Hell will follow.

Now, I may be mistaken here, but I’m guessing most of the folks who believe in an afterlife are talking about Streets of Gold, not Beelzebub’s BBQ. You don’t believe in a deity, you probably won’t buy the quaint notion of the Devil. And if you think Heaven is waiting for you no matter what, why not enjoy a little sinning while you’re waiting for the Pearly Gates to open? No punishment waiting, no purgatory for the wicked. Believe me, Pastor Paul doesn’t pound that pulpit with his ragged Bible to tell parishioners they got nothing to lose if they covet their neighbor’s wife. Go right ahead, cheat the other guy on that used car you said was running great when you know damn well the engine isn’t getting oil up in the cylinder head. You can make a little extra money and still get a reservation in the Angel Motel after your last breath.

Shirley, my neighbor who runs the Pampered Pekingese Pet Grooming service, claims she’ll be reincarnated. As a pup. The Hindu believe the Wheel rewards those who do good, but I guess now we think we get what we want, not what we deserve. Shirley better hope she doesn’t end up at the pound with all the other unwanted pets. Not everyone gets pampered in this mean old world.

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I just read that some of our educators are thinking of dropping algebra from high school curriculums because it lowers the graduation rate. Seems a lot of us students stumble over the difficulty of y’s and x’s and the formulas that use them, then we end up flunking math that year and well, that creates depression and depression causes dropouts and dropouts mean bad jobs, limited career choices and an increased probability for a life of crime. Put another way, if x=the # of math failures and y=dropout rate, x squared divided by y over 3= z, z being the crime rate of any given school district.

Down here at South End Central High the dropout rate is astronomical. Plus the job market is virtually non-existent. I guess we know what this means. It means, even if you don’t understand probability theory, we need to get rid of algebra. We might even need to drop science itself from the curriculum, given that 50% of our students don’t believe in evolution or deductive reasoning. And if we want to increase self worth and employment opportunities, let’s axe literature and grammar too. I don’t know when the last text message or e-mail or twitter I saw had a complete sentence or correct spelling. Certainly not both. You think kids need to read a book, you haven’t been doing your homework. Graphic novels maybe, War and Peace, wake up, you’ve been watching too much Downton Abbey.

Who needs algebra when you can Google up formulas and let the computer do the math? You maybe want to bring back slide rules when a hand calculator does everything you need? Oh, sure, you figure maybe it would be good to understand the underlying priniciples. Like the way you understand your microwave or your CD player or your hybrid automobile??? You think it’s useful to know how to parse verbs or construct a compound sentence in a world that limits itself to 140 characters? C’mon, wake up. Watch a 5 year old kid work a laptop and tell me he needs to learn how to read when the computer can translate words into speech. Or vice versa.

When the day comes that our local heroin dealer needs basic algebra to conduct a drug transaction or our addict needs it to calculate the percentage of worth to sale at his favorite pawnshop when he sells my stolen guitars, okay, we can consider bringing it back into the curriculum. Until then, you might want to consider a career in computer coding and forget math teacher as an option.

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When I first arrived here in the primordial South End, I had a small garden and a smaller yard. The yard I mowed with one of those old push mowers with the spiral blades that worked fine on level land with no rocks. Rocks jammed that set of blades and I mean right now. So eventually we did like all sodbusters and homesteaders, we cleared land and moved stumps and expanded our gardens and lawn. A postage stamp parcel of grass grew into acreage and I put away that little push mower and bought a used gas powered one. Progress? Maybe, maybe not.

My neighbors all got big John Deere riders for their puny weed’nfeed lots. That, or they just call in the landscaping outfits and the Hispanics roll in for an hour and manicure the lawn, edge the walks, trim the hedge. Me, I’m still pushing a mower. Good exercise, if nothing else, plus I get to survey the hidden corners of all those gardens, watch all the bulbs come up, the flowers bloom, the shrubs grow and the trees turn color. It’s my job and I try my damndest to find something positive about it. Although I will admit I cheer the day when the summer drought browns the lawn and mowing ends until the monsoons start.

What I don’t like is working on those mowers. I’m what you call a shade tree mechanic. And that’s putting a positive spin on it. Shade shrub mechanic more like it. Take today. The spare mower has been giving me trouble since it got left in the shed of the house we bought next door. Last year I could make it start, barely, but it wouldn’t run long. This year I decided to let it know who’s boss. So I disassembled the air filter, took off the cowling to the carburetor and unscrewed the bowl that hides the float valve. I had no idea what I was looking for, but you never know, something might be loose or a hose is disconnected or there’s a snake dead in the electrical. Okay, I’m hoping for a miracle. It is, after all, Easter. My lawnmower might roll back the stone and rise from the dead. Why not?

When I loosened the bolt raw gas came out the bottom so naturally I began to hurry. I’m not all that handy going slow, but speeding it up, I dropped the bolt and the bolt fell into the engine area. I could just see it hiding through the gasoline waterfall so I grabbed a screwdriver and managed to wedge it tightly in its hidey hole. Gas spewed everywhere, obscenities flew and I beat that mower like an obstinate mule with my socket wrench. Then I beat it with a large crescent wrench and stabbed it with my screwdriver. All I needed was to spark the fumes and send the whole she-bang to hell and gone. Probably me too. I didn’t much care.

Why God, Why me?? I won’t go into detail, but an hour later I had the bolt back in my hand, back on the bowl, back on the mower. What a colossal waste of my precious time!! I could’ve been watching daytime TV or checking my e-mail for spam. Not that bathing in spilled gas isn’t my idea of a spring day.

I reassembled the little mower, dragged it off the potting table and let it hit the ground from four feet up, I mean, who cares? I have burned recalcitrant chainsaws and destroyed VCR’s and tossed CD players out second story windows. They may think they have won, but they are wrong. There will be no winners. And one will die. Mark one up for humankind.

But … when it comes to machinery, I am superstitious. Science seems preposterous to me in regard to my mechanical ability. I trust in luck. And in a certain sadism toward my metal compadres. So I poured gas in the tank, not because I was confident, but because you have to pull the starting cord one last time . You have to give the obstinate brute one last chance. It’s a code, even if unwritten. You must let the universe work things out and no, it doesn’t make sense and of course it does not a religion make. And because this is what must be done I pulled the starting cord and you can believe it or not, but that mower jumped right to life and kept on running.

Do I think I fixed it? Do I think next time I go to start it, it will? No, my friends, I might be superstitious, but I’m not a gullible idiot. I know my enemy and now it knows me. Today is Easter and my mower has Risen. Let’s leave it at that.

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The political season is in its final innings here on the South End. Down at the Diner the debates continue unabated, but practically everywhere else, we’re wore down, depleted, dejected and pretty much exhausted with the whole damn thing. Even the Pilot House, once Hotbed Central for lively late night alcohol fueled discussions, even the Pilot House has turned its short span of attention to the college basketball tournaments and the pre-season baseball scores.

The tulips are coming in early up north in the fields of La Conner. I was thinking maybe going there instead of the caucus this Saturday. Last time I went to a caucus it was Carter running against Reagan. All the local politicos were in attendance. And me and the mizzus. We never really understood the process and we never went back. I like voting in private, to tell you the truth, not in small groups of people I don’t really know. The tulips, I get tulips. They come in early some years and some years late and rarely, but it happens, they bloom on time. This year they’re way early and the Festival, that two week traffic jam miles and miles long, well, it’s going to be pretty much after the harvest.

I spoze the folks stuck in the colorful backup out in the flats can while away the hours arguing whether global warming is to blame or if the low price of gas is a blessing or not. The big tour buses can haul up the city folks for a slow creep through the countryside and hope for a few fields of blazing candy color seen vaguely through the rain. Us locals pretty much avoid the whole show now. You’ve seen one tulip field, you’ve kind of got the idea.

I wish I could say the same about elections. I’ve seen a few, but … this one is very very strange. Maybe even troubling. Says a little too much about my neighbors, for sure, but hey, that’s the price of democracy. Nobody says you have to be sane to vote.

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