The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Let’s be honest with ourselves in this post-pandemic bubble that will no doubt be replaced with a pre-pandemic surge created by the variants and the folks who refuse to mask and refuse to vaccinate. These freedom loving, don’t-tread-on-me yahoos aren’t going to help us end this plague, no way, Jose, not when all they hear on their Facebook feeds are the fair and balanced opinions of the commentators and congressmen who think Fauci is a lying criminal, the government is a nanny state and the Covid epidemic is phony.

We’ve tried reason, we’ve tried bribery, we’ve tried appealing to their patriotism and they’ve only doubled down on their resistance to masking and to vaccinating. They aren’t going to be convinced and we’re wasting our time. Sure, some states and some cities will go back to wearing masks. The airlines will keep that rule for the foreseeable future, but they won’t be friendly skies, not with the folks who think wearing a mask is halfway to the gas chambers run by the Deep State. The federal government will require vaccinations, sure, they don’t mind injecting nano-trackers for Bill Gates who no doubt is funding most of this propaganda.

If you live in Texas, this last week 214 of you died. Florida, 360 died. California, 183. There were 258 deaths in the United States on July 19th and the number is going up. Sure, this is way below the peak of the plague so why worry just because the numbers are going up daily? If you prowl the internet you can find websites that claim the number of deaths from vaccinations in a recent week jumped up 2000 and that the total number of deaths was greater than from Covid itself. Facts don’t lie any more than guns kill. People do.

We will probably come out of this pandemic with a few less citizens, that much is true. That bothers me, but hey, it could be worse. Worse is the next creepy disease that kills in far higher numbers, some Ebola flesh eating monster that dissolves its victim in days and is more contagious than internet bullshit. The good folks among us who refuse to protect themselves or their kids or their neighbors, well, they’ve shown us what we’re up against. We’ve met the enemy and it looks like them.

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So you survived the Plague Year, maybe didn’t know a single person who died of Covid, not that you thought it was hoax, just lucky, you guess. Now the quarantines are over, the restaurants and bars are re-opening, the mask mandates are voluntary, the world has returned – nearly – to its pre-pandemic state. Why, you ask yourself, do you still dread the grocery store, the trip to town, all those things you once too for granted? Maybe you still wear a mask. Still avoid crowds. Still refuse to fly on an airplane or board a bus. Still send regrets to the few party invites starting to pour in.

The answer, my friend, is you’re suffering from Post Traumatic Covid Disorder, PTCD. And you’re not alone, believe me. Do you find yourself growing irrationally angry when you pass people in the aisle who no longer mask up? Of course you could take off the plague mask too now … but you don’t. PTCD, pal. When friends invite you to their party now that restrictions are lifted, do you fabricate an elaborate excuse? Post plague partum, bet on it! You’re a survivor and you tell yourself you want to stay a survivor. Who knows what viral variant varmint is mutating even now in the regions where the Covid-deniers are seeing spikes in contagion.

The best vaccines offer you 94% immunological protection, so the pharmacology reps say, but you know that means you’re 6% open to disaster. And the new Delta variant is now over 50% of the new cases in America, a more virulent and spreadable mutation and probably growing worse every day. You dream about the next generation of viruses, you wake up with a mounting dread, you read about it in the paper, watch it on the news, you live with it day and night. Post –pandemic? You don’t think so, no way! Post-traumatic, absolutely.

And those people who deny that over 600,000 Americans died of the disease, that bring your blood to a boil? They don’t believe 4 million people are dead around the globe, don’t believe the vaccines work or that they’re a government plot to enslave you, don’t think any of this was more than an elaborate hoax to embarrass the former President before the election, that work you up to a rage? Yup, post traumatic covid disorder. Here’s my advice, take two vaccinations and call me in the morning. And no, it won’t really help….PTCD may not be curable.

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When I first moved to the South End, I decided that since I lived in the Appalachia of the island, I should probably make moonshine and learn to play the banjo. The moonshine turned into beer making back when craft beers and brew pubs were just getting started. The banjo playing, well, I had a 5 string I’d traded a gun for, nothing special, but something to get me started. First year I was here I found a nicer model in a second hand store in Stanwoodopolis, cost me 200 bucks, which, at the time, was a small fortune. I was torturing my dog Gonzo with both of those banjos when I came across a very nice banjo up on consignment in a Mt. Vernon music store, a Japanese knock-off of a Gibson Mastertone, the gold standard at the time for serious banjo whackers. They wanted $350. I drove to a music store that sold Mastertones for $1500 and played some to see if the knock-off played and sounded as good. It did.

My wife at the time told me if I bought that 3rd banjo she would divorce me. I emptied my change jar full of quarters and dimes, etc. and came up just shy of that 350 dollars. It seemed like a good trade at the time, and it still does. I have that banjo and my ex has moved through an equal number of husbands as I did banjos. A buddy of mine who wanted to learn to play bluegrass a few years later asked me what kind of banjo he should buy and I mentioned how a pre-war Gibson Mastertone was the iconic instrument, the Holy Grail of banjos sought after by everyone from Earl Scruggs to Bela Fleck to Steve Martin. ‘You won’t find one,’ I mentioned, ‘so aim your sights a little lower. My knock-off is a perfectly fine banjo.’

Well, some people have more luck than me, I guess, because a month later my buddy was chattering it up with his hairdresser about wanting to learn to play the banjo and his hairdresser said her daddy used to play and she thought maybe that banjo was up in her attic and of course the next haircut she’s brought in a 1927 pre-war Gibson Mastertone in immaculate condition and I thought maybe there is a God after all but he probably is pissed at me for screwing up my first marriage but okay, I was glad for and envious of my buddy’s great good fortune. The Eleventh Commandment: do not covet thy friend’s banjo!

Jump ahead with me 35 plus years. My friend never learned to play that prized banjo but he promised me he would leave it for me in his will. Fat good that would do me. We’d both be in the nursing home, lucky if we could play jawharp. But … a few weeks ago he had a brush with death, still on IV’s for sepsis from some weird infection, and no doubt slightly delirious, told me to go pick up that banjo now before he came back to his senses. Near-death experiences do that to people, I guess.

Yesterday I brought that 95 year old banjo back to my Appalachian shack, strung it up, tuned it and … holy Foggy Mountain Breakdown, Batman, the sound that banged off my 100 year old house’s walls was loud enough to knock pictures off and break stained glass windows. The thing was a cannon, a high decibel monster capable of untold mayhem in the hands of an untutored amateur. Luckily, I think I know what I’m doing. Paddle faster if you hear that banjo, is my best advice.

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Jihad Jimmy, last time any of us South End yahoos talked to him, was holding court at the Thursday AA meeting a month ago. Jimmy had kicked his drinking problem but now he had a religion problem, maybe not to him, but for the rest of the assembled abstainers, for sure. Jimmy had grabbed the first lifesaver that floated by when he was hopelessly adrift in a gin-filled sea and I suppose it could’ve been music or woodworking or yoga …. But no, Jimmy found four nicely dressed folks at his door one inebriated afternoon who asked if he’d care to discuss Scripture.

Good timing! Brenda, his long suffering wife and breadwinner the past two years, had left him the day before and in his drunken despair, Jimmy had sense enough to reach out for proferred help. Always nice to find a Sign or an Omen when you’re free-falling over the cliff of your imagination and believe me, Jimmy was expecting the Bottom.

Addiction, whether it’s alcohol or Heaven, makes True Believers of us. I’m not saying they’re equal, especially when you see Jimmy clean himself up, dust himself off and return to the world of the living. Course now J.J. is talking Rapture. Revelations. End Times. Sign of the Beast. He finds Signs everywhere now. He’s a prophet, although he never claims it. He just Sees what’s obvious, just wants to share it with us Lost Souls.

Just for once, I’d like a religion that loves THIS world. That doesn’t think the Next World is gonna be better. Maybe Jimmy’s going door-to-door with 3 other Jimmy’s, knocking on broken hearts, broken dreams, broken hopes. Maybe they’re saving lives, hell if I know….

Brenda’s doing some clerical work for Windy Rear Realty. It’s okay, she says. Twenty hours a week, not too stressful. She told me he’d stopped by her house a week ago. Wanted her to leave with him and start over. He’d changed, he said. He was sorry. He asked forgiveness before it was too late. “Too late?” she asked. “Too late for what?” “The Rapture,” he told her. “You’ll be left behind.”

Left behind?? “Jimmy,” she says to him, “that sounds exactly like heaven to me.”

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The South End String Band didn’t start out planning to be a band — they were mostly a back porch drinking society with music as a viable excuse to offer their wives for staying out til after midnight. What most of them didn’t know was how grateful the mizzus was to have a peaceful evening to herself. Well, at least until Shelly joined the band.

For years the boys hauled out their guitars and banjos, pulled their fiddles off the wall and strung up all those mandolin strings, met up down at the South End Grange Hall where Tommy the fiddler was Master. In the beginning they were all much more proficient on the jug than on their own instruments, but as often happens with practice, they got better. And as they got more proficient, they drank a little less and began to talk playing in public. When the South End Historical Society asked them to perform for their annual salmon bake fundraiser, they jumped on the opportunity. “Can’t pay you anything,” Edith Wonkszeski told the boys, “but we’ll feed you. And the beers are on us.” That sounded more than fair, Tommy told her and warned her to stock up on those beers, you might lose money on this band.

And so the newly named South End String Band went public. If they liked drinking and strumming, they loved live performances for an appreciative audience twice as much as both put together. Trouble was, they soon found out, none of the boys could sing outside a shower worth a hoot or a holler. Billy on the banjo tried, but he sort of talked his way through, not really sang. And then Shelly came up to them after a gig at the Mabana Sunset Villa Nursing Home and said, “You ought to give me a listen.”
Which they did. She came to the next practice wearing a low cut cowgirl dress and even if she’d sung out of tune, the boys knew she’d be their new vocalist. It didn’t hurt either she could outdrink every manjack of them.

The South End String Band still performs, but after a couple of divorces, the personnel have shifted frequently. Shelly fronts the band now and she’s pretty much the last remaining original member. You can always find a banjo picker in the backwash here, but not another Shelly. The Band practices at her cabin these days and when the night winds down past midnight, Shelly shows the boys the door and always says, “Jug’s empty, boys, time to face the music.” It would be funnier if it wasn’t so godawful true.

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