The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Now that the South End Diner has reopened with its tables separated the mandated distance and its customers wearing masks —well, half of them wearing masks — the usual debate society has taken up their coffee mugs to parse the intricacies of this plague and now the protests. Big Walter the other morning weighed in on what he thought we ought to do with those folks down in Seattle and Gomorrah who had taken over a police precinct station and set up barriers for what they declared were police free zones.

“Take em out!” he hollered. “Hose em down. Gas em, club em, drag em out of there. Who do they think they are, anyway?” Walter is an NRA guy. His real solution is to shoot the whole lot of them. Whoever ‘them’ is. He thinks they’re antifa anarchists, cruising the Capitol Hill area with assault rifles and sawed off shotguns. Walter knows how to handle those types, he’s told us many a morning, maskless and spitting in fury. Even his pals sit as far away from Walt as possible.

Two tables away Jerry declares that this is America, dammit, and people have the right to protest without being tear gassed or shot with rubber bullets. Walter, predictably, said he wouldn’t use rubber bullets. Jerry rolled his eyes, shook his head and set his coffee mug down with a bang, sloshing java onto the formica. He pulled his mask back up and muttered “You should have been a cop, Walter.” Which pleased Walter immensely, judging by the smirk on his face.

Two Toke and I exchanged eyeballs, impossible to judge expressions through these plague masks, maybe the worst part of wearing the damn things, but I saw his eyebrows lift slightly, a sign he was about to enter the fray, stir the pot as he liked to say. “I hate to do this, but I gotta agree with Walter, Jerry.” Walt stopped chewing his eggs, wary of T.T. since they agreed on nothing, ever. Jerry looked shocked too. He pulled his mask down to drink his coffee and waited for Two Toke to make his point.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for protests. Been to a few myself. Been tear gassed and pepper sprayed, all part of the fun. But taking over police stations and setting up your own little government, I don’t think so.” Jerry argued, “It’ll wake the city up. And it’ll show them the People can govern themselves if the city fathers can’t do it right.” Walter choked on his mouthful, waved a fork at Jerry and tried to talk and chew at the same time before T.T. beat him to the punch.

“Picture this: instead of the Black Lives Matter folks taking over Capitol Hill, it was the Proud Boys. Or the Aryan Nation. Posse Comitatus. Folks with guns and attitude. Not your attitude. Walter’s maybe. Not yours, not mine. How would you like it then? I wouldn’t. Not one bit.”

Jerry didn’t want to relinquish his point. Walter wanted to see this new side of the argument. He liked that notion of vigilantes with guns controlling a few blocks of a too liberal city. “Suppose tomorrow we came to the café and the Flatheads declared this a new car free zone. Nobody but the car guyz allowed. Barred the door and set up a roadblock down the road, vintage cars lined up across the highway. Nobody gets in but the Flatheads.” A couple of the vintage car guyz at a table by the door hooted their approval. T.T. said “See what I mean?”

And so normality was restored at the Diner, plague or no plague, mask or no mask, logic or no logic. We all would agree it was good to be back.

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I got a buddy across the island here, Techno Tom, who bought himself a 3-D printer this year. Awhile back he’d helped me retrieve all the information off a computer of mine that died the black screen death. A dead computer is a lot like having your house burn down with all your records, photos, writings, letters, all your memorabilia, so when he managed to worm his way into the guts of that carcass and resurrect the information, it was like a fireman digging through ashes and hauling out photo albums of my life. He even tried to rebuild that house, I mean that computer. And Tom had the relays, the mother boards, the circuits, the sensors and the fuses to do it, an entire room full of gizmos and silicon. But there are limits, even for a genius.

He keeps two servers in his garage. Most of us, myself included, hear the word server and nothing comes up on our cranial screen other than the guy who says, I’m Juan, I’ll be your server. He keeps one dedicated to operating the well for his community’s water system, tracks the tides, the water usage of all the neighbors on that well, the chlorine injection, lab tests, probably every toilet flush up and down the line. It goes without saying he programmed the entire thing, a bunch of black boxes stacked six feet high, a science fiction brain flickering with colored lights over in the corner where some folks might park a car.

A few days ago he showed me his hummingbird feeders, cute plastic things hanging from a tree outside, that he’d made with his 3-D printer. The top screws into the bottom, the feeding spouts project out along the tray, cute flowers adorn the sides. Every bit of it had to be programmed into the computer that runs the machine, then the printer injects molten plastic in a line back and forth for about eight hours to build the feeder. It hurts my head to think of this, the exact distance and curvature of the male thread into the female coil, nothing my brain would handle, not in the years I have left, not maybe ever.

Another friend told me Techno had manufactured a part he needed for his mizzus’ boat’s windshield wiper. Why not? Just plunk down at a keyboard and calculate diameters, distances, whatever it needs, feed it to the machine and voila, there’s the part no longer available in the aftermarket. I was afraid to ask Tom if he’d started buying amino acids, DNA, protein packages and various serums. He just smiled, but when I need a new ear or a better thumb, I know who I’m gonna call.

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This week’s police blotter in the Stanwoodopolis Gazette, as usual, was filled with the heinous crimes going on all around the island. Frightening stuff! One woman called 9-1-1 to report a cat that had clawed her car’s exterior. And if that didn’t send you to the cellar to hide from the ongoing crime wave, here’s one that should shiver yer timbers. Rabbits! Rabbits eating a garden! Yes, hard as it is to comprehend in these civilized times, these offenses happen all too frequently. Bunnies chomping on our lettuce, snacking on our peas, lurking in the bean vines.

What is a citizen to do??? Well, this woman called the police. I can only hope every squad car on the island responded to this cry for help. You know, if they weren’t already occupied with speeders down at the 35 mile per hour zone by the country club. ‘All units, we have a rabbit intrusion in Mrs. Cramer’s vegetable garden! Respond with all possible haste! The lettuce is nearly gone and reports of pea nibbling are coming in now! All units! We have a bunny robbery in progress!!’

I myself have rabbits infesting my vegetable patch. It is no laughing matter!! I have double fences, wire within wire, surveillance cameras, scarecrows, everything but Elmer Fudd and his wabbit gun. The bastards eat everything from peas to donuts. They are a menace, I don’t care how cute those bunnies are, they’re destroying my garden! But … somehow, don’t ask me why, I’ve never thought to call the sheriff. I know they’re not really all that busy, mostly traffic violations, speeding tickets, petty drugs, but nevertheless, I guess I just never thought they would take care of my rabbit problem. Silly me!

I’m not really sure if they arrested those pesky wabbits up at my neighbor’s or not. I kinda doubt it. My wabbits aren’t easily rounded up. If they were, I wouldn’t have a problem, now would I? I’m not really sure if garden larceny by small mammals is illegal, although I would hope it is. I have a family of raccoons who could use a few months in the hoosegow or at the very least an ankle bracelet. And don’t get me going on the squirrels, those rats with furry tails. The cops should set up surveillance on those varmints!

Truth is, I’ve obviously been a varmint vigilante. Next time I find Bugs nibbling on my bean stalks, I should call 9-1-1, not take the law into my own dirty hands. This year my vermin are snails. Eating every sprout as soon as it comes up for air. I tried the beer tactic, but that just made it Happy Hour for slugs. And I have more uses for beer than contributing to the delinquency of a slug minor, trust me on that. Still, about one more day of slimy destruction, I may have to call the sheriff’s deputies. Hopefully they’ve been trained in alternatives to violent confrontation. I don’t need my pea patch riddled with bullet holes from trigger happy cops.

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You know your day is going to go downhill when the first words you hear are “I have some bad news.” You worry just HOW bad that news will be, illness in the family, disaster down the road, any number of fears jumping out of the closet you try to keep them in. So when it turns out to be the washing machine, you think, well, nobody’s hurt. How bad can a busted washer be?

I have dealt with busted washers in my brief time as a Maytag repairman. And I can attest that, no, lives were not lost, but … in some cases I wish mine was after a day or two disassembling machines that were obviously not meant to be repaired by do-it-yourselfers, simple things, but encased behind everything else. The repair bill for something like a catch filter, usually easily accessed, but in our washer requiring door removal and major disassembly, would be astronomical. And probably justified.

Today, though, the door hinge broke. I smiled inwardly, happy in the knowledge that I would not be required to do a washer colonoscopy to repair this thing. On the other hand I’m no longer naïve enough to think any plumbing repair will be a piece of cake, those days are long gone. The plumbing gods, inscrutable and malevolent, exact terrible tolls for those who think they can travel their pipes with impunity. The real question is how high the price? How great the pain? How tentative your sanity?

The door came off without much ado. The hinge was hidden beneath two sections, inner and outer door, but fine, just locate the odd tools that fit the screw heads, a trick the manufacturer plays to frustrate us do-it-ourselfers. I got it out, didn’t even lose some of the screws that fell under the machine, to discover the pins that the hinge rotated on had both broken, top and bottom, no doubt high quality pig iron, something Whirlpool must have saved a nickel or 6 cents using inferior metal. My hope that I could repair or substitute the pins was a pipedream. The entire unit was one piece and I wisely decided not to try to glue the pins back to the hinge, no dummy me. I went online instead.

Where, after some searching for model numbers, I located my part. Whirlpool no longer makes that part, or so my first search stated confidently, probably the worst news I could get. For want of a cheap-ass hinge, the war was lost and a new washer would be required? Really? I went on Ebay looking for a used hinge. No dice. I looked for an entire door assembly. No luck. Finally I went back to looking for the part online and after some time found one. $117. Roll that number back and forth on your tongue, then consider the machine, new, cost about $600. That’s 20% of the cost of a new Whirlpool front load washer. In what universe does this make any sense whatsoever? I will tell you what universe, the one that exalts capitalism, the one that claims competition drives prices down, the one that believes in the fine print that obsolescence is necessary for a vibrant economy, the one that outsourced washing machines to China, that one.

My part is now on order. I reassembled the old door. Backwards of course the first time, the third time was a charm. Good practice for when the part arrives in a week. If I’d wanted it next day, only 40 dollars more. Ten to get it in a week. You know, and I do too, when that part comes, 50-50 it will be the wrong part. This is not pessimism, this is plumbing.

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Now, a lot of us South Enders look a little dubiously at Dad’s Day. It sounds suspiciously like one of those STING operations for deadbeat dads delinquent on child support payments. Get us all down here, then throw the net. We can already see the headlines in the Conway Chronicler: South Enders nabbed in Paternity Sting.

NOT that I’m saying I’m a deadbeat dad. I know being an artist and a banjo picker sort of doesn’t help the image, but we all been down on our luck. Little Jimmy understands that. His mom’s a little less forgiving, but when the CD sales start rolling in and the big art commissions, she’ll change her tune.

What with all these studies proving that more than a quarter of men in this country aren’t the genetic fathers of their children, Fatherhood on the South End has taken on a whole new meaning in these modern times we live in. DNA tests take all the romance out of relationships, you ask me. The old family tree’s got some extra branches now. And I guess that’s good, but it sure takes some of the mystery away from sparking and courting. Personally I don’t care to find out half the South End String Band is related.

But it IS father’s day coming up. Won’t be long before dear old dad is just a Test Tube in some sterile lab. Sample # 74 Double X, blue eyes, dark hair, long fingers for the banjo. I like to think I got more to offer than a Petri dish. Although, Little Jimmy’s mom might not agree.

The Band was thinking of maybe lobbying for Father’s Day being a day of amnesty. You know: Give a Dad a Break Day. Or even a whole month. NOT that I’m saying the boys down here are looking for a way to skip the June payments. We were just thinking a little breathing room ….. you know, til the CD sales pick up.

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