The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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We Shall Overcomb

This week an avalanche buried a resort hotel in Italy, tornadoes destroyed towns in Georgia and Florida and Alabama, mudslides crushed homes in Southern California after monster rainstorms, a train flipped over onto an adjoining one in India and a bus full of kids hit a barrier in Europe and burst into flames killing most of the passengers. Fire, pestilence and mayhem! Fear and loathing!

And, of course, Trump. It was a week of disasters, catastrophes and portents of things to come. If I were a biblical sort, I might sacrifice a first born, the omens seem so fraught with terror. But … an old friend sent me words of hope, a message of optimism, a life preserver for these turbulent seas boiling with foul toxins. It said: WE SHALL OVERCOMB.

I’m receiving too many e-mails of despair. My old man is still sending bogus news about the Obamas. The folks who put Trump in office won’t let go of their bogeyman. The Clintons have a secret plan to get back into power! The lying press won’t recognize ‘alternative facts’! We’re still arguing if the Inauguration wasn’t the hugest one in the history of the universe, as if anyone but the man with the biggest ego in the universe cares. As if anyone of us care. We shall overcomb is what I think. The world will keep spinning on its little axis, the Syrian War will spill more blood, the Middle East won’t have peace in my lifetime, the immigrants from the south will keep on coming wall or no wall, the Russians have a new best buddy, the rich will get richer and the poor can eat cake. Jobs are going to the robots, privacy is a joke, there are more channels than ever before on cable TV. What’s changed?

I’m pruning my 26 fruit trees. The firewood needs to be hauled in from this winter’s downfall. Taxes are due. Our health insurance is about to expire. Same as when Nixon resigned. Same as when Reagan came in threatening to shrink government. Same as when Clinton cut back welfare, same as Bush when he invaded Iraq looking for those pesky weapons of mass destruction, same as Obama fighting on with drones, same as the yahoo we got now bringing back coal jobs, same as always….

We shall overcomb! Yes, indeed, we surely shall. Meanwhile, I got trees that need some serious pruning.

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Fiscal Phil lives up north of me in one of our many gated communities. He owns a few rental houses down in Seattle and Gomorrah, bought when prices were pre-Amazon and the town was driveable, now worth fortunes. We’ve been friends since before the War, the Iraq ones, and so occasionally I drive through the gate after telling the guard who I am and who I’m visiting and he pops up the wooden swing arm that has STOP stenciled on its side in case us barbarians can read.

For as long as I’ve known him, Fiscal Phil has been convinced the world economy is on the verge of Total Collapse. Trump’s election only confirmed his paranoia. “The Dow just broke 20,000,” I offered as cheerful counterpoint to his apocalyptic vision, but he only shook his balding head sadly and placed his coffee cup in the built-in expresso machine he’d custom installed. Beans got ground, the grounds got pressed, water was steam injected and a few moments later he had a fresh cup, Starbucks on demand.

“Two years, Skeeter, that’s what I give the market before the Crash. I’ll be out before it does,” he said, an old prediction. Predictable as that perfect cup of joe, he rattled off his strategies for survival I’d only heard 100 times, everything from Krugerrands in his safety deposit boxes to raw silver buried in some hidey-hole in the back yard. A few thousand bucks in cash. Food stored in the basement, enough to last longer than a Mormons storehouse. Phil still has his Y-2K stockpile: generator, barrels of water, gasoline. “Doomsday,” he always intoned at the end. “It’s going to get ugly, Skeet, you better prepare yourself.”

I mumbled, as I always did, that things didn’t seem too bad. Pretty good, in fact, and Phil, true to form, shook his head sadly. “Survival of the Prepared. Don’t be a victim. What’ll you do when the money’s worthless and the food runs out?” he asked, less concerned for my welfare than for proving he was ready.

“Probably come over here, Phil. With a gun. Survival of the Most Well Armed.” Phil, never big on humor, especially the dark variety, looked shocked. Next visit, I knew, he’d tell me about his new arsenal. Dog eat dog. I guess I got two good years at least.

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It was a sunny day yesterday so I decided to take a stroll through the neighborhood, maybe see if any crocuses had poked up into the sunlight early this year. Call me an optimist, but I’m forever hoping to quit my hibernative tendencies of these dark winters. Daryl and his mizzus Claudia were out by their garage when I waltzed by so they asked me in for a cup of coffee. I said sure even though I wanted to stay out in the sunshine as much as possible, not sit in their dark kitchen where half the time the curtains remained drawn.

Before I could say ‘cream’, Claudia was off on the election, so heated up she could’ve boiled the water for our coffee on her nose. “You believe that egomaniac?” she started out and by the time I’d gotten my java she was ranting about the cuts coming to Planned Parenthood, the next Supreme Court nominee, the pipeline in North Dakota and the undisclosed tax returns of the newly minted President of the Free World. Daryl smiled at each verbal fusillade and sipped his black coffee, occasionally offering up fresh meat for Claudia to gut and dress.

Claudia and Daryl pretty much stick to their god’s little quarter acre. Like a lot of us down here on the xenophobic South End. But unlike most of us, they see storm clouds on the horizon, tempests coming onshore, pestilence creeping in from the woods. The glaciers are melting, the seas are rising, the earthquake is around the corner and the bird flu will kill half the world. Sinkholes will take their car, the government will ruin the global economy, tomorrow is something to be dreaded. I don’t usually take sweetener in my coffee, but given the extra bite of bitter, I spooned in a little honey. This launched a tirade about killer sugar and the food conglomerates’ greed, high fructose sugar, transfats, GMO’s, additives, diabetes on the rise and the end of Obamacare. I could feel my stomach starting to roil.

By the time I got back outside dark coastal clouds had rolled in and the sun was pretty much blotted out. I knew I wouldn’t find a crocus trying to reach for spring; instead, I’d see the nettles poking up back on the trail in my woods. The groundhog wouldn’t see his shadow this year, he’d be dead of groundhog flu. An ill wind blew through the firs and I wondered if rain wasn’t far behind. Rain and toads, hail and misery. I hurried up, hoping I could make it back to the house before the sky fell in. Darkness seemed to come early. The house seemed miles away. And even if I made it back, it probably would’ve burned down by the time I got there. I thought I heard wolves howling. No, I was sure I heard wolves.

Turned out it was just the neighbor’s dachshund yapping. I could see the house. It was unburned. The sun had come back out. The Olympics were incandescent across the Sound and a warm breeze greeted me when I came out of the woods. A little cluster of snowdrops were poking up by the woodsheds and the hellebores were blooming. Maybe, just maybe, spring wasn’t far behind.

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The Pilot House Lounge was packed. You’d’ve thought the Super Bowl was coming on with half the South End turned out to watch it on the bar’s big screen, the 52 incher Fat Fred had installed at one end of the lounge just for such sporting occasions. Trouble was, this wasn’t the Super Bowl or even a playoff game, it was Trump’s Inauguration. And it was way too early to be drinking heavily, which the unruly mob clearly was.

The South End, like the rest of these not-so-United States, is more than a little divided on most issues, but with the Donald, we’re like Serbs and Bosnians. So far without the genocide, although … Fat Fred wasn’t too sure Rwanda wasn’t on its way by the time Clarence Thomas swore in the Vice President, Pence. Jimmy the Geek, not a habitual drinker, was sudsed to the gills, drinking doubles of straight Jack with a beer for a chaser.

“You’re swearing on a Bible, you liar!” he shouted, hammering his bottle in a staccato drumbeat. The big screen TV looked like a drive-by shooting when someone tossed a crumpled wad at Jimmy. “Sit down, Jim!” Terry hollered from behind him. “And be quiet. Have a little respect for the moment.”

“Are you serious?” Phil shouted back. “These guys never showed anybody any respect. Why should we?”

A table full of Viet Nam Vets where Wild Billy held court, their flag patches bristling on their black Harley vests, began to holler, answered by the tree huggers at Two Toke Tom’s rowdy table. Trump was on the screen now, his hand on the Bible Lincoln used, his wife — “an ‘illegal immigrant’ Jerry shouted from the back — holding it while Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath of office.

“So help me God,” Trump stated, then the Lounge went crazy. Fred tried turning off the TV but that suicidal move pissed everyone off so eventually he relented to cheers and a few boos. An hour later most of the surly mob had skulked off to face the music at home, a mere few moments of matrimonial hell compared to the next four of who knows what.

Two Toke said, “I was pretty worried there for awhile.” “About violence from that crowd?” I asked. “Naw, the inauguration,” T.T. answered. “That was CNN we watched. Trump already told us they were liars. Fake news. I’m gonna take him at his word. That guy isn’t president. Not if CNN says he is.” Tom waved a hand in farewell. I guess he has a point. What a few days later we call Alternative Facts. Me, I’m planning to watch the Super Bowl somewhere other than the Pilot House. Hopefully alone.

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