The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Holy Mackerel, another New Year already! Every year we throw a party, usually with about 60 to 70 yahoos looking for a shindig close by so the sheriffs don’t need to be too concerned about their wobbly drive home. We get mostly neighbors and old friends, plus the usual stragglers who feel guilty they might be crashing the party … until we explain it’s basically open to all comers. So far we haven’t had to toss anyone out and no lives have been lost.

Although … there was that year when Steve came running toward the fire pit and never saw the bricks piled up next to the driveway. I saw him go down from my vantage coming up the hill. It was ugly. He never got a hand out, just went down like a Doug Fir cut by a 30 inch chainsaw. No one yelled Timber! They didn’t have to. I turned and went back down the hill to the shack figuring the revelers by the fire could call 9-1-1 or administer CPR if necessary. Too many docs spoil the triage, I think the expression goes. Steve, it turned out, was fully medicated and the faceplant caused bruising and bleeding, but pain was factored out. He was up in no time, fresh painkiller in hand.

We did have the year when the Belgian girl took her dance ensemble onto the main stairs up to the second floor, shaking their booties to some throbbing techno music they’d brought to dance to, high as Katmandu kites, when the staircase gave way. Turns out I’d attached it at the top when I built the house with only a couple of deck screws rather than lag bolts or something a bit more substantial. These things happen, I guess, and once I’d done a cursory investigation of the problem, I suggested they dance upstairs on the more solid living room floor.

There was the year the sheriff sat out in front of the driveway busting someone we hoped was not one of ours. Took forever and no one dared leave the party until those blue lights turned off and our scouts declared the coast clear. Those strobing blue lights merged with the strobe I had in the window of the shack just above, plus the megawatt floodlight that illuminated the fir tops, plus the disco colored balls that rotated out through the back room’s windows. All in all, pretty impressive light show!

We used to grab a crew and dig clams after midnight some years, but not so much anymore. One New Years Day we found Mike sleeping in the rain out on the lawn, not really too much worse for wear even though he had no blanket or tent. And there was the time Tom left his wedding ring on the bathroom sink in what turned out to be a Freudian slip that led to divorce soon after. And no, most of the neighbors across the street won’t come anymore, not since Bear hollered obscenities from the deck at our new house at them, something about ‘go back to the &%$@@# city, you pukes!!’ I explained later the sentiments weren’t universally shared, but, well, you know how people’s feelings get hurt.

So in a day or so we’ll have at it again. Am I nervous? Oh, not very. I usually just stand back and watch from the sidelines. I kind of think of it as their party, not mine. The days when we went until 4 or 5 o’clock are pretty much a thing of the past. Some New Years Days I feel okay, not like the time we closed up at 5 then had stragglers come a couple of hours later to spend the Day with us. You try sleeping two hours, then entertain hung over. No, New Years is a mellower affair these days. At least I hope so. Wish us luck. Or come on down, see what the shouting’s all about….

Hits: 98

So okay, it’s been a long strange trip, this year of our Lord 2017, almost dream-like … and now you’re wondering if you’ll wake up to find the world hadn’t really changed after all, that Faux News was actually factual, that the world was round once again, that the Wizard of Odd was just a fat guy with too much money and yes, you can have a brain. And a heart. And you can go home to Kansas or Kamano or really, wherever you want.

Well, you Kan!! But the Port of Entry isn’t so much a place as it is a point in the Time/Space continuum right down here New Year’s Eve at Prasse’s Portal of Renewed Possibilities. Bring a dish, bring a friend, bring some magic potion (adult beverages work nicely), bring whatever optimism you can scrounge in the lint filter or under the couch cushions. We’re ringing in 2018 and you KNOW it’s only going to get BETTER!!!

Hits: 241

Hits: 449

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” George Orwell

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Words do matter. We so-called writers, addicted purveyors of the language, kind of know that, even if we have our doubts in these polarized times. So when the government bans words like ‘substance abuse disorder’ (it implies drug addiction is a disease) or ‘science-based’ (better to use something like ‘science in consideration of community wishes’) or ‘fetus’ (maybe use something like ‘little people who can’t speak for themselves and can’t vote but who don’t want to be killed by liberals who don’t read the Bible), they’re hoping to skew the meaning in their direction.
Nothing new here. You don’t believe in Global Warming, hey, ban the use of the words. Call it the Will of God or Faux Science. Course, if you ditch the words, then you can ask the question, why fund research into non-existent phenomenon? If you refer to fetuses as unborn humans, then you can write them into laws like one where a minus two month old kid can apply for a hunting permit. Validates the idea of life beginning at conception and goes for the twofer of applying the Second Amendment nine months earlier than before. The NRA is happy, the Right to Lifers are tickled, what’s not to like? ‘Right to Lifer’, there’s another nifty use of words.

My favorite this year, of course, was ‘Alternative Facts.’ Kind of sums up the entire Administration’s approach to, well, pretty near everything. Lies? Naw, just Alternative Facts. The News? No, dummy, not alternative facts, they’re Faux News, what we now call Lies. I know, it’s slippery at first, but after a year, we’re all getting used to it. In the Orwellian dystopia, Big Brother had to set up entire agencies to revise the history their Alternative Facts kept creating. In this new paradigm, not so much. Quote Trump from a year ago contradicting the current opinion, no problem!! The news media is biased. Faux!! They are, by definition, Liars. No need to bother about revisionism, it’s built right in. You just have to redefine Truth. Or ban its usage in the Newspeak altogether. Big Brother is smiling these days. And George Carlin is laughing his ass off.

Hits: 148

Hits: 72

So all us little hooligans would roll back into school come September and invariably our new teacher would give us our first homework assignment to write what we’d done during our summer break. Three months of unstructured play and now we 4th graders or 6th graders or whatever grade were supposed to compose an essay to describe idyllic idleness.

It didn’t exactly ruin it for us, that’s not how it felt, it just didn’t work, like jamming a square peg into a round hole. Maybe Miss Crenshaw went to Italy with her paramour and toured Rome and the ruins, adult organized vacation time, we didn’t know and we couldn’t make her write that essay, that’s for sure, but how were we supposed to scribble out on #2 pencils an interesting couple of wide spaced pages all those sandlot whiffle ball games and the bike riding or those long treks in all directions past the creeks and ponds or through the woods beyond the new houses or that time we went so far nothing was familiar and it took hours to find our way back home? We spent whole afternoons playing marbles, fer chrissake! We’d kill an entire day trading baseball cards or swapping old musty comic books, what are you going to say to Miss C. about that?

Sure, there was the time Joey Vandiver fell off his bike and broke his arm — he had a story. About two sentences before the rest of his vacation he hauled his arm around in a cast he carried in a dirty filthy sling. What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Not Much!!

We all signed our names on Joey’s cast. Did we all write that down on our essay? Were we going to be graded on all that NOTHING we did when we should’ve gone to Yellowstone National Park or 6 Flags over Atlanta? I shouldn’t have to tell you, I hated going back to school. And that first assignment should tell you all you need to know about WHY I hated to go back to school. Vacations are exactly like freedom. You don’t have to do a damn thing. And you don’t feel guilty either.

Until you go back. Today we’re going back and this is my essay…..

Hits: 160

Hits: 95

Well, it’s that time of year again when old Skeeter and the mizzus and a few friends pony up the sleigh and head out to the boondocks where Christmas is barely on the radar. Where the stockings hung with care are full of holes and nobody expects a miracle anytime soon from Santa or the Easter Bunny or Donald Trump. Mostly just another day in a long succession of rainy ones. Okay by us.

You get my usual Christmas gift: a reprieve from these endless droning observations on the South End. A chance to clear your heads. Maybe even turn off the TV and the news and shut down the computer. We’re definitely going to. Sounds real good to me. Real good. I hear about one more analysis of that tax bill most of the people who passed it don’t know either what all’s in it, I’ll eat my hat and the mistletoe hanging above it.

So before we go, Merry Christmas to all of you and Tiny Tim too. And Santa, if you’re listening, I’ve been only marginally naughty so maybe you could grant me one measly present. How about bringing me a new America. One that isn’t so greedy. One that isn’t so militaristic. One that cares about the poor and the infirm. One that values compassion over swagger, truth over braggadocio, science over corporate consultants. You know, the America we used to believe in even if it probably never existed. Just asking…

And if you’re too busy, I’d take a cup of kindness. Short supply, these days, I know.

Hits: 69

Christmas on the equatorial South End doesn’t arrive on Black Friday, one hour after Turkey Day is still undigested, the way it does the rest of Jingle Bell America. The urge to drive 40 miles to the nearest mall with a maxxed out credit card doesn’t compel us to hurry up the holiday that will only push us one step closer to bankruptcy trying to buy the kids enough presents to hide the water basin under the tree.
Oh sure, it’s swell to say every year that the holiday is really about the Spirit of Giving, that the True Meaning is sharing and love and blah blah blah. But for a full month the REAL meaning blasts across the airwaves, piles in drifts of glossy sale ads, whistles down the blacktop in a high decibel muzak howl fever-pitched to buy buy buy some more….
Nothing new here. Nothing we haven’t heard every year of our lives. Too much commercialism. Too much emphasis on materialism. Too much tinsel, too little joy? Plug in the Blu-Ray re-released hi-definition “It’s A Wonderful Life” and watch it for the 50th time, only $29.95 on Amazon or run down to Wal-Mart at midnight on Thanksgiving with White Christmas spewing over the loudspeaker in a synthesized cadence determined by a shopper survey study group to enhance purchasing.
Naw, you can have it. Down here we’re gonna hang the nettle wreaths the day before Santa sets sail, string a few festive lights (that won’t stay up all year) and maybe invite a few neighbors in for a Yuletide nog spiked with something savory. We won’t give too many gifts, you can bet your stockings hung with care, not in these hard economic times, but we’ll help fill the food bank carts for those who need help this season way more than us.
Like always, we’ll drink a toast. To another year with our loved ones. To Peace on earth. To good will toward men. And women too. We probably won’t watch “It’s A Wonderful Life”, we’ll just try to live it. And hey, all you Cyber Monday Shoppers — A Merry Christmas to You, Too! Just not 365 days of the year, okay?

Hits: 39

Hits: 138