The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Now that the edict has been passed down requiring us South Enders to quarantine ourselves, concerned friends and relatives call or email to inquire if we’re okay, worried that prolonged isolation down here with nothing but the beach and the woods confining us to a primitive existence, well, it might lead to, oh, mental instability. Or worse.

I tell them we’re fine, we’re all right, we’re really okay, nothing to worry about, we’ll manage just hunky dory. Got plenty to do here, wood to saw and split and haul, repairs to be made, garden to be planted, hardly enough hours in the day to get it all done. Don’t worry about us. Life goes on pretty much the same as always.

What I don’t mention is the guitar in the shack. The one I’m building while I’m also repairing the last one I built. Today I tore apart the first one I made, popped the walnut back and went to work on the guts. Three of them are sitting in various stages of assembly — or disassembly — on the tables down there. Parts are strewn from front door to back, necks are lying around, pickguards are being varnished, tailpieces are drilled, strings are everywhere. I know, it probably looks like the Mad Hatter’s luthier shop. But … nothing to worry about. I’m fine. Busy, as you can see.

Do I need a 5th homemade guitar? Why do you ask? It’s just a harmless hobby. Something to keep myself occupied. No, I don’t think it’s an obsession exactly. An addiction? C’mon. It’s hardly an addiction. Okay, no, I guess I’m not sure why I started this last one. Boredom maybe. One more chance to get it right, this guitar building. You know, learn from the first four mistakes. Improvement through practice. Yeah, I see that the last one was worse than the first three, so what’s your point? I’m repairing that one, aren’t I? Maybe when I’m done, it’ll be better. A lot better. Maybe so much better I’ll wish I hadn’t starting building the fifth one. Okay, I know, that’s what I said about the first one when I was half done with the second and already tearing down the first one but it did sound better and all right, I’m inside that one for the third time and now there are two more not quite done and … what? It seems like I’m going backwards? Does it? No, I don’t agree. I have two that are finished. What? Yeah, I tore those apart too but … what’s your point?

No, I’m perfectly fine. Just got a little hobby to while away the pandemic plague. If you’re interested in purchasing an instrument, just say so, I can probably have one ready by the time the virus has run its course. Got to use your fiscal stimulus money on something, right? I’d make you a deal on multiples. Take the whole lot, big savings. Very big savings. Might even save me.

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Easter, a time for resurrection. And so our very devout Pastor-in-Chief has declared that the economy will be risen by Easter. Pews will fill, church bells will peal, congregations will congregate, the plague will have passed by our doorways. A miracle, a miracle! Hallelujah, a Miracle! The man could walk on water! The man could feed multitudes with a single loaf of bread! The man can stop a pandemic in its tracks with a single utterance! Truly, is this not a Man among Men. Verily, is this not the Second Coming?

Some of my friends think maybe he hasn’t been sent by God to save Mankind. These naysayers think he might be delusional, narcissistic, possibly insane. Obviously they were not followers of The Apprentice on prime time TV all those years, week after week passing judgement from on high, a cross between Judge Judy and Dr. Oz with a smidgeon of the gang at American Idol. The man’s a billionaire, so what if he doesn’t need to prove it by showing my pals his tax statements? He’s rich, he’s a playboy, his name is on really big buildings, he can do what he wants with beautiful women. If God was going to send another Moses, trust me on this one, he’d send Donald J. Trump. After all, the man’s favorite book is the Bible. Both of them, new and old, with too many of his favorite passages in there to name just one.

When he says he has a hunch those anti-malaria drugs will cure coronavirus and stop this pandemic completely, so what if the so-called experts shake their pessimistic heads. His hunch, in case you weren’t paying attention, comes from the Source. John the Baptist might have gotten dreams from the Lord, Donald gets hunches. You want an affidavit? You need a notary public? The man is an emissary, I’m telling you, the man is a prophet. If you think science is going to save your ass, wake up! Donald Trump is going to save your ass. Pretty soon. He’s got that antidote coming and when that gets distributed to even you non-believers, you doubting Thomases, this Kung Flu is going to meet its master capital M and by Easter the economy will be roaring back.

My buddies can chuckle all they want, but mark my words, those steeples will be ringing with Donald’s praises by Easter, bodies pressed close once again, hands will be shaken, hugs will be given and I suspect the offerings from thankful parishioners will rise up too in passed plates. Easter, a time for resurrection. A time to give thanks. To God, of course, but let’s be honest here, mostly to Trump. Can we have an amen?

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These are hard times in America. The President said we’re at war as he opted to use the Defense Production Act to force industries to start making ventilators and probably hepa-vacuums for Mar-a-Lago. When the going gets tough, the tough talk tough. Kung Flu. Chinavirus. The war will be waged by name calling, apparently.

Someone must have whispered in the President’s ear that the public thought his initial response to the pandemic was pan-anemic. No big deal, the big guy said, just a hoax perpetrated by the media and his enemies on the left. But someone mentioned the tide would turn against him when cadaver carts rolled through American streets collecting the dead so he changed his tune. Asked how he thought he and his administration handled the pandemic, he gave himself a 10. Great Job, Donny! he might as well have crowed, giving himself a pat on those huge padded shoulders. Daily he rolls out ‘the team’, all jostling for camera space despite the admonition to adhere to ‘social distancing’. If any of these folks develop symptoms for kung flu, well, so much for the fireside chats.

Every day we get the updates, rosy scenarios of tests available to everyone soon, tomorrow, pharmaceuticals that appear very promising, ventilators coming immediately … then invariably some expert contradicts the President. No, not tomorrow, sir, no, not very soon at all. Happy talk is great. Over at Fox News the happy talk is non stop. What epidemic? That phony cold?

Meanwhile the economy has ground to a near halt. Planes are grounded, buses run mostly empty, stores are shuttered, restaurants are boarded up, bars don’t open, streets are desolate, cities are ghost towns. Concerts are banned, public gatherings forbidden, borders closed, schools closed down, even funerals are taboo. The stock market keeps going down down down. Trillions will be spent on corporate bailouts, unemployment compensation, tax relief, medical remedies, checks to all of us. Nobody but a self-deluding moron thinks tomorrow will be a better day. Somebody needs to get tested … and not just for the chinavirus.

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The news of the week down at the Yacht Club before they closed their doors due to the plague and social distancing was the sudden upturn in gun purchases across the coronaviral landscape we once called the South End. Apparently unarmed households, worried anarchy was being unleashed, were buying up pistols, shotguns, military assault rifles and anything else that might protect them from the urban hordes who survived the pandemic and now roamed the countryside in search of toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Zombie apocalypse was nothing compared to what was coming, or so said Fat Freddie as he swilled his third pint of protective anti-viral panacea. “Mark my words, boys, they’ll be coming here to take what’s yours and you’ll be defenseless.”
Big Walter was three quarters in the bag sitting with his back to the far wall, his usual place in the Pilot House Lounge, giving him full view of the door and whatever threat might bust through. “Let em come to my house and see how they like a burst of semi-automatic lead.” Big Walter was full bore National Rifle Association long before Charlton Heston made the phrase Cold Dead Hand a rallying cry. Walter lived down past the Tyee Store in a dilapidated single wide back in the blackberries and nettles. To get to his swampy acreage, an army of plague victims would need to navigate the most rutted road on the South End, rattling mufflers and setting off Walter’s hounds in a baying alert.

None of us knew what kind of arsenal the minuteman had in there and none of us wanted to find out. Two Toke certainly didn’t, but he didn’t mind needling our resident Survivalist either. “Folks probably heard you had a stockpile of Charmin down here,” he told Walter. “Rumor has it you got more toilet paper than Costco. Might just be,” he said, pointing his ale at Walter back in the corner, “you’re the reason these urban desperadoes will come down here. Puts us all at risk, Walt, endangers the entire South End.”

“Let em come, Tom, see what they get. I got enough firepower to fight off all these kung flu fighters, trust me on that.”

“Kinda my point, Walt. You got an Alamo down there, but the rest of us, well, we’re easy targets.”

And so it went, that last night in the Lounge before the doors closed due to the Pandemic and we all drove back to our quarantined shacks. Driving home in the dark, I thought to myself, it seems like the Past has come to pay a visit, all of us isolated in the backwash, keeping to ourselves, hermits once again. I don’t expect anarchy to descend on the South End. What I expect is the same quiet we once had back when I first rolled down this blacktop road on a rain-swept windy night back in 1977. Paradise. Just a few of us escaped from the lives we’d given up on, the only dreams the ones we’d start working on right then. If we had to start over, not a bad place to begin. Maybe instead of guns, we should buy hoes and shovels, axes and rakes. It gladdened my heart to see the lights from our house pouring out onto the lawn. I thought, we’ll be okay. Hell, we’ll be fine.

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