The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Little Walter, Big Walter’s oldest boy, was sucking on a Marlboro, one boot up on the chrome bumper of Harry’s newly restored ’64 Nova, waving his can of Pabst in the ketone-laced atmosphere of the Tyee Paint and Body Shop. He was addressing the assembled masses on this particular Friday afternoon, the boyz’ favorite day. Not because it signified the end of a work week; after all, most of us layabouts are unemployed, self-employed or just employment challenged. Naw, we just like to remember when Friday was PayDay and Friday night was a night of freedom. Now everyday is a day of freedom and it seems like a subtle form of slavery.

“This country,” Little Walt was saying, “went down the crapper when we started giving people all this free stuff. Socialism, that’s what it’s called, and it killed folks’ incentive to work.” Little Walter has been unemployed for most of his adult life. He’s currently laid off from the hardwood mill over in Arlington and for the past year he’s been living off the unemployment comp he gets plus some loans from his old man. Big Walter isn’t happy about this, but he places the blame squarely on the ‘ruined’ economy. He let the boy live in the spare bedroom of his double-wide and now he has to feed the kid too and fight over what programs they watch on his 50 inch flat screen entertainment center. They both have beefs.

“You talking about that tax break we gave Boeing?” Terry asked. Terry is the kind of guy who, if he knows someone is a hypochondriac, asks them how their health is, what we on the South End call a Pot Stirrer. He doesn’t really take a side, he just wants to light a fire.

“Hell no, I’m not talking about a tax break!! I’m talking about giving these people who don’t work for a living everything they need to keep on not working for a living, that’s what I’m talking about.” He crushed his Pabst can in his right hand and beer foamed out the top and onto Harry’s new paint job. Harry said Hey Man and Walter grabbed his dirty handkerchief and Quickly wiped off the suds.

Terry said, “You must be talking about those people on unemployment compensation then. Folks sitting around drinking and not looking for honest work. You mean people like that?”

Well, you can maybe guess where that conversation went. It’s just another day loitering on the South End, debating the issues of our time, nothing much better to do than drink beer and chit chat with the neighbors. Somewhere else they got wars and refugees, they got terrorists and beheadings. People starve, people are killed, people live hand to mouth. I don’t know much, but I know this. Things here aren’t too bad, they aren’t really bad at all. You ask me, and I know you’d hate to, it seems like complaining is damn close to a sin.

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Like a lot of you, I get a news feed compliments of my internet. In my case I get Yahoo News. Well named! Being a news junkie, I thought at first this would be great, an up-to-the-nano-second breaking news report, keep me abreast of world events, the latest Trump polls, hurricane forecasts and imminent nuclear war. Alas, this isn’t exactly how it has played out.

Just for instance, here’s what’s on my Yahoo News right now. They got some coverage of the Brussels bombing, what you would expect, right? Next we have a flash that Sarah Palin is signing on for some Judge Judy gig. Hot dog. Tom and Gisele, who I haven’t got a clue who they might be, have ‘an insane diet when they go on vacation.’ I was afraid to look into what they might be eating away from their ordinary home meals. There’s a man who says he slashed a woman because she was white. Okay, that sounds bad. Two girls thought they were straight until they met each other. They were white girls and they weren’t slashed. I guess that’s good. There’s a list of 17 fast food restaurant flops. I bet there are even more…. Yolanda Foster went bra-less. Can’t say I know Yolanda, but I was tempted to peek.

The Supreme Court had its first tie since Scalia died. Bet it won’t be the last one. There’s an article on how to escape from duct tape when you’re kidnapped. I really should read that one. There’s another one about Hillary’s e-mail problem and how she should really drop out of the race. I only see two or three versions a day of that. Benghazi is pretty frequent too. Here’s one about parents rallying around a teacher who made racist comments on social media. Always good to side with the racists, I guess.

Michael Jackson’s kids aren’t going to get their inheritance, apparently. Not sure why, but not sure I care either. You can watch what happens when a piece of paper is folded 7 times under a hydraulic press. I suspect it looks the way my head feels.

Well, if ignorance is bliss, I’m thinking I might just give it a try. But I bet ignorance looks a lot like my Yahoo News. And bliss it really isn’t. Or maybe I’ll just let Judge Sarah decide.

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When I was a young guy I used to think a bit about Death, capital D. Kind of a melancholy waste of time, I finally decided. You spend much time on the subject and pretty soon you’re down the dark alleys of heaven and hell, God and Satan, reincarnation and ghosts in the attic. I finally decided that there are some things in this world I’ll never understand, probably plenty I won’t even imagine, worlds beyond witnessing, universes within universes.

I decided reality is more than enough. Lately I’ve been talking with friends who are taking classes in Mindfulness, whatever that is. They tell me it’s a focus on shutting down their thoughts long enough to pay attention to the world that isn’t our own jabber. Used to be we would sit in a lotus position and chant OM, the original sound, the first noise, be still, be aware, be here now. Be mindful, I guess.

Swami Betty was over the other day, I guess is why this is on my mind, mindful or not. Betty is forever searching. For answers, for cures, for God, for something to fill her life up with meaning. It’s not a bad quest, you ask me, but it’s not my quest. I’m not looking for answers any more. In fact, I’ve even quit looking for questions. The world isn’t a puzzle to be figured out, at least not one I’m going to have any luck solving. I’m no Zen detective.

Betty’s husband died a year ago and her kids are estranged. She asked me last week, over her fungus tea she grows in a gallon jar on the kitchen counter, some concoction that she’s been keeping alive for ten years or more, while I had a cold beer, if I believed in God. We were out on her back porch, sitting on the rickety steps that led to her gardens, and the sun was full on our faces, the bees were humming as they slipped flower to flower, the world seemed plenty full to me. Betty wants to believe, but what kind of deity kills her husband and lets her children abandon her as an eccentric old South Ender? She’s a bit adrift and I know I would be too.

“Well,” I said, “ I would hate to run into God if there was one. I could do a better job dreaming up a world than that cruel fool. I’d ask what was He thinking? Just what the hell was he thinking?”

Betty chuckled. “Tough guy, huh? Kick his ass, maybe?”

Well, in the end we came to the usual conclusions. Just a couple of old friends sharing a porch, idling away our brief time in this hard old world. Life, I think, is more a music than a riddle. And if maybe shutting up for awhile, if being mindful or quiet helps us hear it, I guess that’s fine with me, just don’t ask me to whistle the tune….

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Denny the Dealer and I were hunkered down in a watering hole up north and the waitress had just brought us our beers. Denny, always on the lookout for an ‘angle’, held up his hand and said, “Wait a minute. Is that what I ordered? “ The waitress didn’t know Denny, at least not yet, and she said, “Didn’t you order an IPA?” There was just enough uncertainty in her voice that Denny pronounced that no, he had definitely ordered an ESB.

You maybe never have known a boy like Denny the Dealer. He doesn’t believe in paying full price for anything. He thinks you should buy him dinner, I guess for the pleasure of his company. He will take a broken tool back to the hardware store, possibly not even the one he bought it from, and demand they replace it or give him a discount on the new one. Or on something else he wants to buy. He has a scam for everything from mailed packages to airline tickets. If you dropped him in a bazaar in Constantinople or a tourist shop in Tijuana, he’d make them sweat for any puny profit they might make off him.

He has a business that he pays virtually no taxes on. I asked him how that was even possible, naïve about the nature of corporate tax laws, and he spent half an hour describing various offshore corporations he’d created, multiple bank accounts that shifted money from one to the next so that they never showed more than $10K at some magic time for the IRS. He has money in another person’s name, underage and therefore beyond the revenuers reach. I assume he spends more time in fiduciary sleight of hand than he does in his business enterprise. You want to see capitalism in action, you need to drink with me and Denny.

I’m going to assume, for the sake of friendship, most of what Denny does is legal in a strictly tax law sense. Moral, I think we can safely say moral doesn’t weigh in on Denny’s calculus. Money, they say, is the root of all evil and maybe so, but what I know from watching folks who think money is pretty near Everything is that it usually doesn’t buy them happiness. Easy living, yeah, but it’s hard to be happy when you’re always worried someone is going to get the upper hand in your deal.

Our waitress was obviously flustered, what with screwing up Denny’s order, so she reached for his glass to take it back, dump it and get his ESB. Denny didn’t hesitate, he just offered to take the IPA and pay half price, fair is fair, he said. The waitress was considering it. At least until I said, “He’s pulling your leg. He does this everyplace we go. He ordered the IPA. He thinks it’s funny to horse around.”

When our relieved but somewhat puzzled waitress left, Denny shook his head. “I try to teach you a few tricks and what do you do? You’ll pay full price for everything, Skeeter, and lemme tell you, that’s not how the real world works. Full price is for suckers like you.” I took a long sip of my own beer. Which, being the first of the day, tasted like liquid pleasure. “Worth every penny,” I said, already knowing what Denny would say in reply.

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