The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Today we’re going to my wife’s father’s funeral. She’s been out here in Wisconsin three weeks while he died a lingering and painful demise, probably memories she’ll never erase but hopefully not permanently scarring. I arrived here in Oshkosh a week ago after flying into Madison to visit my 98 year old dad in the assisted living place we put him six months ago, only to walk into his apartment to find him flat out on the floor half dressed, moaning from where he’d fallen. Welcome back!

I’m not accustomed to Death or Dying. Although … I suppose nobody is. Wars maybe. Pandemic hotspots, possibly. Having worked in a hospital as an orderly for ten years, I witnessed plenty of horrors but those were strangers, brief brushes with fellow earthlings leaving their mortal coil, just part of the job, nothing personal, no need to turn it into a philosophic inquiry.

This is different. It feels as if we’re all dying. Which, of course, we are. If we care to view it that way. People like to say — and even believe — a funeral is a kind of Closure. I’ve never understood that word ‘closure’. A door closing behind us, shutting out the past? Turn off the lights, lock the door and leave the Do Not Disturb sign on the knob?

We’re going to the cemetery where Karen’s mom was buried years ago on a similarly cold bleak and windy November day in Wisconsin, the sky the color of Lake Winnebago, spitting snow over an open grave, soon to be filled back in, grass growing again in spring, all of us back where we came from, back to the business of living.

I’m no longer a philosophic enquirer. Explanations are the faux news of my existence. For those who ask no questions, there are no mysteries, no need for answers. Life, I think, is more like a music, not a riddle. The dead dance with us, the living. They’re never really gone and the door we thought we closed was never really soundproofed.

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Steve Forbert sang this back in my youth:
“Here’s to all the shitty jobs that I despise
Here’s to two-bit guarantees and other lies”
I guess I took Steve pretty much to heart in my wayward youth. Worked in a dog pound for awhile, taught school a bit, drove trucks and buses here and there, stripped furniture until the fumes got to me, cleaned Coca-cola bottlers and loaded their trucks, managed a University dining hall, spent one night in the local cannery shoveling corn husks out to a conveyor belt, tried my hand at carpentry, ended up on the graveyard shift weekends at the Everett hospital as an orderly. My favorite days were the ones when I threw down the shovel and quit. My least favorite were the ones spent looking for the next shitty job.

My folks thought I was mostly a slackard and a bum. Quitting was for Losers might have been the crocheted sampler on their kitchen wall, but fortunately for me, I’ve never been looking for parental or peer group approval. In 1992, I had had a dose of bad jobs, bad bosses, low pay and all the rest. We had decided the old shack we had lived in the past 17 years wasn’t going to outlive us and the mizzus was lobbying for us to hire a builder, get a mortgage and move into the modern world. I, of course, was terrified of a mortgage, a ball and shackle on my current job, the one I planned to quit as soon as possible, meaning, right now. So … I begged her, pleaded my case, swore I would build the house myself and even, so help me god, get permits and build it by code, a novelty for us after multiple illegal additions and buildings. No doubt in a moment of weakness, or plain pity, she relented and agreed I would quit my graveyard shift job, build the house and when it was done, make my avocational glass business a real occupation. And if it wasn’t ….? Well, that was the dagger.

The house took me two solid years, almost to the day. Hardest work I’d ever done. Happiest job I ever had. I worked 7 days a week, long days, lots of overtime, plenty of stress. You try building a house by yourself, learning plumbing the night before, electric from a book, most every step a new education. But day by day, nail by nail, the house rose out of the ground, a satisfaction that’s hard to describe.

And then the day came when it was finished. Time to make a living doing art or else it was back to the mine. I always thought artists should have a day job, if for no other reason they wouldn’t be forced to compromise their art for money. But … the opposite might be more true. Necessity might be the mother of creativity as well as invention. If you want to be an artist, nothing focuses the mind like the fear of those crummy jobs throughout the years and more to come. Poverty is okay. But it’s far better to be working for yourself and even better if that work is what you love. Quitting, sometimes, is the best strategy.

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I was at the opening of new works by one of our local oil painters at the South End Fine Art Gallery and Expresso Shoppe. As always it’s a guaranteed large crowd, mostly us artists and a few of our friends and occasionally a patron or two. Regina, the gallery owner and latte barista, always provides liberal winepours and enough hors d’oeuvres to hold back rickets among the starving artists another week or so.

I was admiring a fine piece titled, tantalizingly enough, “Sailboat at Sunset #56”, one of a series I’m guessing of at least 56 or more, when a couple jostled me out of the way for a better view. I didn’t really mind moving on, after all, there were plenty more similar offerings, but the gentleman of the pair had caused me to spill my merlot onto the sleeve of my last presentable Goodwill shirt, then gave me a cursory ‘scuse me,’ that sounded vaguely like ‘sue me’ before steering his companion and her jangling earrings into the appropriate viewing angle. A moment later they were discussing perspective and complimentary colorations, the expressively bold brushstrokes of the sails, the minimalist way the artist had captured the shimmer of the sea, and of course, the price, anything BUT minimalist.

“I may not know art,” my jostler said, sipping daintily on a white wine from his plastic glass, “but I know what I like.” He was quite pleased at this knowledge, no doubt gained with considerable effort. His companion wagged an earlobe with a windchime banging to life, evidently in total agreement with both of us on this aesthetic declaration.

I guess I was still miffed about the impromptu dye job on my best shirt, or maybe it’s just a character flaw deeper than any fabric stain, but I smiled winningly and said out of the cerulean blue, “I don’t know much about biochemistry, but I sure know a good clone when I see one.” This caused some raised eyebrows, a rolling of the eyes and the beginning of distant alarm bells that would soon drown out the jangling jewelry. For good measure I added, “I don’t know much about history either, but hey, I love a good war. I know what I like.”

So okay, I cost Regina a commission and I should feel bad about that. Probably cost the artist a sale and I should feel worse about that, but I don’t. I do happen to know something about art, and I know what I don’t like. I guess it’s okay to buy what you do; I just don’t think we should be proud of our ignorance. Then again, what the hell do I know?

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When we were kids, my brother and I noticed the little grocery across the bridge leading up the hogsback past the Pelican River in Northern Wisconsin sold bait. We asked the owner if he would buy worms from us and he said, yah sure, u betcha. Even provided us with the cardboard containers we’d put 50 red worms in with some mulch. So, being good little entrepreneurs, we went to work down in the ravine below our house digging up thousands of the wrigglers and selling them to the store where we noticed they also sold nightcrawlers which sold for a lot more than the regular worms.

Nightcrawlers, for you folks who never explored your backyard grass in the middle of the night with a flashlight, are giant worms that sneak out of their burrows after dark to mate. They especially like rainy nights. We’d wander around the yard with a flashlight and see their long shiny bodies stretched out of their holes, but as soon as the light hit them, zoom, they shot back underground. You had to be quick, no hesitation, and accurate. Get a grip and pull real slow so you didn’t rip them in half. Half nightcrawlers weren’t saleable. The big ones brought a nice profit.

True kid capitalists migtht’ve franchised the operation, recruited other kids to dig and hunt, monopolize the worm market from Wisconsin to Texas, expanded into grasshoppers and eels, sequenced worm DNA, built huge bio-tech labs with 3-D printers, added bio-luminescence as fish attractors, controlled the bait shops across America and organized ‘protection’ to keep rogue worm dealers from incursions into our empire.

But … we didn’t. Too busy, I guess, being kids, discovering girls, drinking and rock and roll. Story of my life. Opportunity, like the Bard said, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Well, we missed our chance. Worm Kings, could’ve been us.

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“No Way! No Way!” Techno Tim was hollering to any and all down at the South End Bait Shop and Marina where he was checking his 25 foot Arima parked in its berth. Both Tim and the fishing boat were rocking wildly, buffeted by storms real and imagined. A few of us boyz were hustling along the dock, tightening lines, securing bumpers, trying in vain to avoid Tim’s rant, especially when we all ended up trapped inside after the front of the squall sent waves lapping over the wharf and rain sent us all scurrying indoors, soaked in 15 seconds.

Cap’n Phil didn’t even wait before drawing our favorite beers from the cooler. And neither did we, grabbing beer rags and towels and bottles in one choreographed movement, drying off and wetting down simultaneously to Tim crying “No Way can this country afford raising minimum wage!!!”

“You’re a small businessman, Skipper, tell em what’ll happen when you can’t afford to hire help at 20 bucks an hour.” Cap’n Phil slid back behind the counter, half defensive, half official, half hidden, mostly none of the above. “You sorta answered your own question, Tim,” he dodged.

“Damn right! Nobody can stay afloat paying high wages,” Techno shouted, proud of his meteorological metaphor in the very teeth of the storm lashing the Pilot House that served as informal bar for the Marina. Miserable already, I decided my 2 cents wouldn’t make much difference. “Techno, you gotta put yourself in their place, the ones working full time and can’t make a Go of it.” “Their place?” Tim spluttered, sparying foam over his storm battered lips. “Their place? Get a better job, I say. Get some ambition! Get an education! Quit looking for handouts.”

“Seems a little cold hearted, Tim,” Gyppo John threw in, a towel draped over his head. He looked like a post-fight boxer. That, or a demented Yasser Arafat. “Cold hearted? Hell yes! It’s dog eat dog in the jungle of capitalism. Wake up and smell the money, John! The losers deserve what they get!”

“Pretty much nothing,” I answered. Techno Tim always did rock my boat.

“Serves em right,” he cried happily and threw down half his Bud Light in one victorious gulp, then slammed the bottle triumphantly on the formica … before noticing the bow line on his Arima had wrenched loose and his boat was bashing against the neighbors. Howling, he headed for the door. “You guys gonna help?” he asked mournfully, pausing at the door.

Gyppo said, “Dog eat dog, Tim Boy.” Cap’n Phil said he was feeling cold hearted all of a sudden. I asked, slouched comfortably in my seat, “What’re you paying. I sure don’t work minimum.”

Techno cursed us one and all , then scrambled into the squall. We waited a judicious minute, grins all around, then finally went out to help. Fun is fun, but in the end we’re all in this together.

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