The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I got a lot of friends who are O.C.D., obsessive compulsive disorder folks, what we on the South End call Anal. Harsh word, anal, so for our purposes here we’ll stick with OCD. Don’t want to offend anyone, but linguistics can be a two edged knife. My pals suffering from OCD are mostly engineers, but they don’t see their symptoms as suffering. Or a disorder even. In fact, they would argue that the orderliness they demand of themselves is quite possibly the panacea for the problems the rest of us have. Course, they don’t factor in the fact that the problem I have is mostly them.

But let’s be fair. The new psychiatric diagnostic description for myself is: S.L.O.B. Seriously Lacking Obsessive Behavior. Poor toilet training as a kid, I guess. I don’t have to wash my truck every damn week. I don’t wash it every year some years. I accept that the universe is falling apart, what we call entropy down here in the South End Scientific Community. It’s just how things work. They go to hell in a handbasket and if you want to spend your life pushing rocks up a hill like Sisyphus, be my guest. They’re going to make a nice rock wall for yahoos like me when they end up down my way at the bottom.

I don’t make my bed. I don’t clean my windows. I don’t dust my shelves. I don’t edge my lawn. I don’t stack my firewood in nice rows. I don’t organize my files. I don’t follow directions. I don’t even look at the damn directions. I don’t follow a recipe or write one down either. I mean, why? The next batch of bread or homebrew or the next meal will be different, maybe better, maybe worse. C’est la vie, amigo! Routine is the killer, lists are for someone closer to death, order is for the delusional, life is chaos and the sooner you accept it, the better off you’ll be. So yeah, I’m SLOB.

I’m sure there’s a pharmacological cure for my ailment. But hey, I’ve got a pharmacological cure for lots of my ailments, why add one that might have side-effects for the others? In the final analysis, I suppose there’s a nice equilibrium between me and my OCD cronies. They draw in the lines, I draw the rest. When it works, we got a great little homeostatic community. When it doesn’t, well … we’ll find out what happens when gravity hits anti-gravity. Probably sounds like my banjo…..

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I just got my first blackmail letter. Maybe you get them infrequently, but I live a pretty scrupulous life, as you probably know. So when I found this in my inbox, believe me, I was shocked. Shaken to my core. Suddenly paranoid. Probably I should have gone directly to the police, but … with the protests and riots and vigilantes, I knew there was no time left for the gendarme to investigate a crime that didn’t directly involve violence. Although! The tone of the extortion letter certainly didn’t rule out suggested mayhem if I didn’t cough up some future request for money or …? Or what?

This is the email I received last night:
What’s going on, my man? My son reports that he saw this guy in a beat up old cowboy hat dressed in clothes that look like he slept in them and slowly realized that it was you, the stained glass wizard of the south end.
OK so far. But, I just could not believe my ears when he said that you were driving not your old beat up, cow pasture, red-neck pickup but, (and I can barely get the words out of my mouth) a brand new Prius?? Tell me it ain’t true? You haven’t gone over to the dark side more often associated with them high-brow folks who live north of the Mason Dixon line, more familiar to newcomers as Mountain View?? I mean, how you gonna carry your still around? And how is it gonna look when you and the South End String Banders show up in fancy new wheels. My god, man, your rep is surely gonna take a hit.

My blood stood still reading this. Believe me, I wanted to change my email address, disconnect my land line or even move to another county. I’ve watched enough cheesy TV cop shows to know that blackmailers never stop. Once they have their claws in you, the demands escalate faster than riots after pepper sprayings. The next message would undoubtedly be for a small amount to keep quiet. The one after that, who knows? Acreage? Musical instruments? My unsold stained glass windows? All of the above eventually, I’m betting. Especially when my extorter learned the worth of my homemade instruments and stained glass panels and fell into an inchoate rage.

So I did what any red blooded American would do in these dire circumstances. I wrote him back with my own demands.

As my commander-in-chief would tell you, these are damnable LIES, faux news, some sick conspiracy and obviously a pathetic attempt to extort money from poor old Skeeter. Your son was no doubt drunk or drug addled or both, probably huffing hi octane directly from the pump and mistook some wretched geek for myself. Get your boy some help before it’s too late!! I can recommend any number of discreet dry-out houses if you need the ones that require references. We can let this sordid attempt at blackmail die quietly on the vine. As you well know, nobody would believe this story anyway. I do NOT wear a beat up old cowboy hat nor wear clothes that look slept in. Mine are what we call weathered. And my truck, albeit possibly riddled with two or three ‘bullet’ holes from flying lawnmower rocks, is certainly not a redneck pickup, rather a well traveled and vintage half ton with the proper patina. Exactly, patina!

But I will say, not so much in self defense as simple justification, the mizzus’ car gets twice the mileage of that vintage truck of mine. My new motto and possibly the epitaph for Skeeter’s headstone: 65 mpg. Your son asked if it was a bit sluggish on acceleration. Tell him what a Tesla does in full stomp mode. Hang onto yer hat!! Not that Skeeter would ever be seen driving a Tesla. No sir, not unless he took off the cowboy hat.

Needless to say, the tactic, so far anyway, has worked. Let this be a lesson to all future blackmailers.

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About 7 hours ago I turned 70. Welcome to the new 60. Or the new 50. Or whatever. I think they mean years, not IQ, but I suspect it’s not years. It’s only been about an hour ago that I woke up to discover I was now a septegenarian. If I lived in a society that revered its elders, I would be a king. But as you probably know, we live in a society that finds older people mostly embarrassing. Actually, after mostly old white people elected Trump as president, I do too. So much for that adage that age begets wisdom.

I thought maybe this would be the year I was forced into retirement. When the pandemic hit, I figured for sure this was the year. But if 70 years have taught me anything, they proved time and time again don’t count yer chickens before they hatch, that cackling you hear may not be fowl. We had two colossal maples fall behind the house and so the year began with a major job of bucking, splitting, hauling and stacking firewood, 12 cord so far and plenty more to go. You think that’s retirement, you been watching daytime TV too long.

My day job, the stained glass stuff, well, that had pretty much dried up. I lost a couple projects the past few years in Utah and Alaska, made the finals but missed the championship ring. Those don’t come along very often anymore in these times of fiscal restraint. Alaska gutted its public art program, no more out-of-staters allowed now that the oil subsidies up there are dwindling to trickles. I had organized a local craft show that featured the best artist/craftspeople we could round up, held it two years but this year the plague canceled it. The glass and the guitars I’d made for it, hoping maybe to sell some of those instruments, well, they can just clutter up my studio another 12 months, probably longer. So hello retirement, I figured.

I offered the county a donation of a 21 foot long mural of glass for their new Administration Building, figuring I might as well keep working even if I have to work for free, maybe delay the Big R a few months.

But like I said, eggs aren’t chickens and so when I got notified I’d been picked for a glass commission by the WA Arts Commission, I put the rocker back in the corner, cast off my lap blanket and put away the drool bucket. Maybe it wouldn’t be the end of a glass career just yet. Next year probably. Yep, I can just about hear that chick pecking at the shell, almost breaking out.

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With garden planting already under way, I’ve been searching for seeds. Usually I roll into the nearest hardware or grocery or garden supply store and load up on whatever seeds I need, plenty to choose from, some organic, some not. This year I found the display racks pretty much empty. So I did what any modern gardener worth his manure would do, I went online. I found some of what I was searching for, not all by any means, and the price was at least double what it would be ordinarily. After a few days of letting my fingers do the walking, I let my credit card to the talking.

I recalled back in those early plague days long ago when not just toilet paper was being hoarded, but yeast and flour too. I’m a bread maker so it was more than marginally disconcerting to discover some of the basic ingredients were unavailable, although I already had a large supply of wheat berries, seeds, grains, molasses and flour stored up. The other day a friend who sells us beefalo called to let me know he’s swamped with calls from desperate people wanting him to sell them meat. Another buddy mentioned that freezers were selling out all over. You could order one, but hell might freeze over before your meat got frozen in a new cooler.

The latest tactic to avoid food shortages in these End Times seems to be the purchasing of baby chicks. Wait a few weeks and you got eggs by the dozens and even fricassee once you’re sick of omelettes. You can use the chicken droppings on the garden, double your lettuce production. E-I-E-I Oh! We’re all going back to the land, maybe buy a couple calves, build a barn behind the garage.

What are we to think? Are folks expecting the plague zombies to surge into their grocery stores and clean out the shelves to the last loaf of white dead bread? Are they planting gardens, growing food, storing meat and pizzas, baking bread and fermenting homebrew? If the internet goes offline suddenly, you can bet your crop of zucchinis that panic will ensue within minutes, gun safes unlocked, doors bolted, a siege mentality spreading across the Home of the Brave. Only those with guns and cans of pork and beans will survive. Looters will decimate the sad little backyard gardens and no freezer without a kryptonite lock will keep the hordes from emptying their booty.

I give it a month before the rabbits munch down the lettuce and the carrots and the neighbor dogs feast on the chickens out in the crummy pen thrown up by the sandbox. Maybe two before the bread making experiments and the brick-like loaves stop seeming worth the trouble. Three before the bathtub gin starts poisoning entire neighborhoods. Believe me, we’ll clamor for an end to the quarantine. Death by virus might seem a welcome relief.

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These are tough times in the Land of the Free Home of the Brave judging by the reactions to legitimate protests and illegal rioting across the country and, really, across the world. Oh sure, we could make this a political statement, accuse the antifa or the boogaloos of fomenting further divisions in this already partisan land, but really, why bother when the divisions are already Grand Canyons without any zipline for entertainment?

This week the town of Snohomish, antique mall central, went on full alert after the police reported that left wing looters might be driving up from Seattle and Gomorrah to smash, loot, pillage and rape. Antifa, oh no! Vigilantes drove in to offer their guns and their patriotism to the city police department and then about one hundred of the good ol’ boys with assault rifles, pistols, shotguns and who knows what heavier armaments guarded the business district. The fact that some were drinking gave the new Alamo a definite festive flavor. I know there’s nothing I like more than a good vigilante tailgate party, assault rifles and liquor always a recipe for fun. Throw in a Confederate flag or three during a protest against white supremacy and the recent killing of a black suspect in Minneapolis by a white cop, well, sir, now we’re talking a real good time, southern style. I’m betting folks brought a rope just in case the opportunity arose for a good old fashioned lynching.

The KKK is still alive and well in America. Along with dozens of other white supremacist variations. Nice to see them linking arms with our local gendarme, full blessing of the police chief and the mayor. Just good citizens helping out. No need to wear a white hood these days, much less a plague mask. You get these uppity blacks demanding equal opportunities, well, somebody’s got to protect the mansions and the country clubs. And the women, don’t forget the women. Apparently a lot of us are still living in 1880.

If I wanted to prove the protesters correct, this is about all the evidence I need. Racism isn’t easy to eliminate, may never be, but we can certainly tell those good ol’ boys to take their guns and their rebel flags and their open containers home. Nice to know the sheriff thinks they’re okay. Hell, he didn’t even have to trouble himself to deputize them.

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