The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/a-christmas-carol-on-the-chinese-south-end.mp3[/podcast]a christmas carol on the chinese south end

Hits: 22

  Back in the less consumer-driven days of early Christmas, we South Enders would hang our stockings by the chimney with great care. Mostly so they wouldn’t catch fire…I mean, we used that chimney for heat.  How Santa was going to get down the brick chute without scorching those red pajamas of his, us young’uns didn’t have a clue.  So we worried about St. Nick.  Well, mostly we worried he wouldn’t leave us anything at all while he was hustled off to the nearest burn unit.   Our parents told us not to lose any sleep over it – Santa probably had fire retardant uniforms.  Oh, right, like Kris Kringle moonlighted as a chemist half the year.       

    But Santa always did seem to find the South End on Christmas …  which didn’t help to explain the half empty stockings and the paucity of presents under the tree every year at our house.  We kids just figured Santa had checked his stupid list, probably twice, and we were blacklisted on the NAUGHTY side once again.  We even used to leave cookie bribes and a jug of something savory to drink when he showed up.  It was odd how the jug was always empty and still, the stockings were sadly deficient.  Pa always said the reindeer must’ve been thirsty and we’d say, hey, if Donder and Blitzen could find their way here and down a burning chimney with a 6 inch hole to the woodstove, how come St. Nick couldn’t find us?  And Ma would give Pa a dirty look and say, something was Blitzen all right, but it wasn’t the reindeer….

     Santa finds the South End pretty easily now, I’m telling you.  Come Christmas morning it looks like a China R Us down the middle of the living room, barely room to squeeze near the tree.  Nowadays we don’t leave Santa a plate of cookies.  He expects an ATM machine and a Visa Card.  Christmas down on the South End lasts and lasts – about 12 easy payments, then it starts all over ….

Hits: 16

Hits: 20

Hits: 14

Hits: 37

Neighbor, do you wake up mornings, look out your window over a cup of your favorite roasted coffee and discover the suburb you left behind two short years ago has followed you here to Paradise? Does it seem like four of your next door neighbors are saluting you with their Starbuck’s coffee? At night does it look like the sky is glowing an eerie electronic blue from 17 TV’s flickering out every living room window? During the day does it seem like every retiree from here to Elger Bay is mowing his weed and feed lawn on a precision close-order drill of riding John Deeres? Do you find yourself daydreaming of a place in the country where you’re the only lucky fella in the subdivision? Friend, stop thinking the grass is gonna be greener somewhere else… You know the chemical fertilizers aren’t any more effective there.

What you need is our newly patented, completely remodeled South End Insta-Foto Fence. Installs in just minutes with household tools! The Insta-Foto Fence not only repels stray dogs and unwanted neighbor kids, the life-like realistic scenes of rural retirement will lull you back into a reverie of country contemplation.

Lay back in your reclino-lounger with your favorite adult beverage and view scenes of rural bliss. We offer a full catalogue of bucolic photo options. Maybe you want an ocean vista, waves gently rolling on to your immaculate yard. Order ‘Sleepy Shores #17’. If Pastoral Paradise (#3) is more to your taste, a panorama of cattle grazing by far off trees on a gently undulating hillside will make you want put a straw in your mouth and a lemonade on the side table. Maybe the long monsoon months of interminable winter have got you long in the mouth. Try ‘Tropical Sunset foto-fence #6’ and forget those drizzly days of the past. Prefer something more exotic? Maybe a golf course scene in Hawaii is more your style with its happy duffers driving the fairways of your own backyard. Just order ‘Pebble Beach Hole #9’ and imagine that drive between the sand bunkers hitting the green every time. Twenty images to choose from, installed with no muss, no fuss. So easy and affordably priced you’ll want to change fences often.

Instant Foto-Fence. Because you deserve more than another man’s suburbs. Now available in electric for maximum dog repellant protection. Keeps out the deer too!!!

Hits: 26

Hits: 18

Hits: 15

Hits: 21

I just saw a survey that showed where 30% of kids under the age of 4 years old have a TV in their room. Granted that Mom and Dad want their child not to feel deprived. No one, not even kidless me, wants a maladaptive, potentially hostile punk menacing his or her fellow pre-schoolers because of a deliberately imposed TV deficiency. Plus, it’s a great solution for a 2 year old’s fear of the dark. Boogieman under the bed? Believe me, he’ll pale in comparison to the nightly news.

I remember sitting in front of our first TV – a small box on metal legs with a rabbit ear antenna on top – waiting for Howdy Doody to come on down in the pre-dawn livingroom while we stared at the Indian chief test signal. TV didn’t program 24/7. No, it had the decency to Sign Off at 11 or midnight, let your brain de-fuzz awhile. Us kids would sneak a flashlight under the covers and read a book. At least until the Old Man came in and told us to go to sleep….

Obviously 30% of you don’t find anything wrong with parking a TV in the nursery. But I do. It feels like the scene in Invasion of the Body Snatchers where the parents — who’ve been snatched already — put the space pod under their kids’ beds. Somehow I doubt the tots are watching PBS. More likely they’re tuning in to 30 commercials an hour, making mental notes for what cereal to whine for or what candy bar or toy or the car they’ll want at 16. Might as well join us adults in the Consumer Nation. Plus it’s a great babysitter. Don’t worry about attention deficiency when they reach 6. They’ll have a computer by then.

Tomorrow I’ll probably see the study that 50% of kids under 7 have their own credit card. Just order up what they want with their I-phone and have it delivered overnight. Call now — our advertisers are standing by.

Hits: 16