The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Scroungers, Packrats and Hoarders

Clyde stopped by our place yesterday, wanted to know if I wanted some wood flooring. Clyde’s notorious for scrounging lumber — beams, 2×4’s, plywood, chopped off rafters and joists full of nails — he takes it all, he and his partner Fred. They’re true South Enders, no building parts are too unworthy for future projects. No oddly shaped root or burled tree trunk couldn’t be imagined as a trellis or a doorway or a garden gate. Their greenhouse/apartment is a testament to homesteader ingenuity, from the recycled plumbing for a radiant heat floor to the gnarly limbs of a cedar tree that frame a window made from sliding glass door panels. The roof is raftered with bridge beams and salvaged lumber, all covered with earth and plantings, a green ecosystem.

So when Clyde asks if I want some wood flooring, red lights go off and a siren shrieks deep down in my hippocampus. “You don’t want it yourself?” I ask, meaning, what’s wrong with this flooring if you boyz are turning it down? Clyde avows how they don’t need flooring and anyway, it’s all mismatched remnants. Like they don’t have mismatched remnants from one end of their property to the next??? “Use em for furniture,” I advise. “I took my leftovers and made cabinets and bookcases, banjos, hell, it’s hardwood.”

“We’re jammed up,” Clyde says sadly. “Stuff we got now is getting powder post beetles. We couldn’t use it all in the rest of our lifetimes.” Which is true! They’re beyond Scroungers now, heading toward Hoarders. It’s a fine line, I know, and only a packrat like myself who’s scrounged most of his life is qualified to define the slip from Collector to Psychopathology. Clyde, I diagnosed, had stepped back from the Abyss. Enough was finally enough. Clutter was one thing, tunnels to the kitchen and bathroom quite another.

No mas! There comes a time when a sane man knows implicitly to STOP. Before it’s too late. Before madness descends like a dark curtain blotting light and reason.

Today I picked up 10 boxes of hardwood flooring, enough to lift the front end of my truck. No, I don’t really need flooring. But, you never know, right? Now if I can just figure out where to store all this wood until I need it….

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Early this morning I got a phone call. Lately all my calls are from charitable organizations asking for help. I figure mostly they’re legit, but how would anyone know? Breast Cancer Societies, Police Benevolence, Fire Fighter Funds, Veteran’s Organizations, environmental groups, you name it, they’re asking for donations. Volunteers man the phones, cold calls, too much competition with hurricane and earthquake relief, long day, I bet.

My early bird caller today greeted me with “Hi, Grandpa, how you doin’?”, no doubt soliciting for the Lost Grandson Society. I said I was doin’ fine, how bout yerself? Well, my heretofore unknown grandkid wasn’t doing all that well, he confessed in a strangled voice conveying pain and anguish aplenty. He’d been at a wedding last night, probably a relative of ours I never heard of, and he’d been pulled over by the police and well one thing led to another, he’d had a few drinks but he wasn’t drunk, he assured me, try explaining that to the cops and so, here he was, in jail, in trouble and who could he turn to for bail but his old gramps?

“Can you help me, Grandpa?” he asked pitifully, muffling a sob. The kid was good, I’ll give him that much. “Blood’s thicker than water, Boy,” I replied and he asked me to write down his case number and the name of his public defender who I could wire the money to. By then I’d tired of the charade and hung up. Two minutes later his court appointed attorney called me back.

“You little low-life creep. What rock do you live under?” Which prompted an immediate click, then on to the next phone number on the list. I’ve been botherd by this all day. One call in a hundred they must get a poor Alzheimer person, an elderly man or woman with a good heart who can’t recall their kids’ names now much less their grandkids’, who might want to help Little Billy who’s stuck in a jailcell, only asking for $1000 for bail.

It’s a cruel enough world without filling the kiddlie pools with reptiles like these. I understand the folks who prey on the greedy with Nigerian money scams, but not the ones who feed on kind and generous hearts. My next grandkid, I hope to hell I do a better job raising him….

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I guess if you’re not the kind of leader who’s interested in history, you might have missed the Katrina debacle. Day after day, week after week of video showing the victims of that hurricane struggling to put their lives back together, struggling to survive, calling out for help back in the swamps. The nation got a dose of what reality was like down in the delta so that when President Bush flew in and shook the hand of his Disaster-in-Chief, telling him what a great job he was doing, the country was not only shocked, they were pissed off.

Trump flew into Puerto Rico without reviewing the film clips of Katrina’s aftermath. As usual his administration was doing a great job, fantastic job. But the trouble is all those lying journalists down there shooting footage of the carnage. Folks without food or water or medical care. Humanitarian shipments sitting idle at the docks with no diesel to run the trucks to deliver all those items. No truck drivers. No open roads. No electrical grid. No communication lines. No clue. The mayor of San Juan decried the President’s characterization of the clean-up as a Good News Story. “Dammit,” she said, “this is not a good news story, this a people are dying story.”

The President, true to form, attacked the messenger, saying the mayor expected everything to be done for Puerto Rico when they should be doing it themselves. Even George Bush didn’t make the mistake of telling Louisiana to get off their swamp cracker Cajun butts and suck it up. But he still paid a huge price in popularity for an apparent lack of conservative compassion. Folks in this country can be hard hearted, but video of half naked kids drinking polluted water from a filthy creek touch a chord. They expect some help from the damn government, not criticism the victims aren’t grabbing their own bootstraps.

You ignore history at your peril, that’s for sure. Tweet all you want about those crybaby NFL players, but the evening news loves a video of devastation and misery even more than a hot controversy revolving around the flag and the anthem. We aren’t so callous yet that we blame the victims for a Category 5 hurricane. Those people on the 6 o’clock news aren’t faux and they need some help. My advice to the President, send in the Marines, send in the Navy, send in some helicopters, send in whatever it takes. If you don’t, no sunny press conference about the great job the administration is doing is going to save the nation of Puerto Rico. Or you.

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