The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Filling a Niche for the Rich

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but other than self-employment, there’s not much work down here on the South End. The neighbors think retirement is Hard Work, but other than paying well, it really doesn’t qualify. Even under our bohemian standards. Hell, everyone practically’s retired down these parts. We just don’t get a pension or Social Security yet.

The best way to make a so-called Living here is to find something the retirees need. Pet grooming. House sitting. Lawn care. Koi pond maintenance. Security system installation. Probably not preschool or daycare. Although …. Down the road we’ll need adult daycare. Half of us do now. We just won’t admit and if we got cable TV, we can bluff our way a little longer.

Freddie the Handyman is a good example of ‘filling a niche for the rich’, his unspoken motto toward his clientele. He can repair a garage door or add a deck out over the bluff, he can replace a garbage disposal someone tried grinding a spoon in or change out the original sink. I worked a few years with Freddie, mostly the dumb end of a shovel or the crawling part of a crawlspace work. When Freddie needed a second pair of hands or just someone willing and desperate enough to tackle the gruntwork, I was his boy. We replaced rotted beams under old homes, we we installed electric water heaters, we built additions and we tackled leaky roofs, although Freddie would take a look, shoot some caulk or smear some tar, but roofs, he said, were a money pit, probably lose on the callbacks. So we stayed near the ground mostly. Too near, in my case. I was always face in the dirt, burrowing my way through decades of spider webs beneath floor joists, doing god knows what Freddie had contracted for.

“When I retire …” was Fred’s favorite topic at lunch breaks. “This will all be yours …” was his second favorite as we munched sandwiches on the tailgate of his beat up Ford pickup. Ladders, extension cords, toolboxes, chopsaws and all the detritus of the current remodel awaited me like a City of God, if you believed Freddie.

Well, Fred retired and moved to California to be near his daughter. Said the cost of living was cheaper, which might be true. Sold his house in the Country Club and rented a space in a mobile home park for more than some mortgage payments. The living might’ve been cheaper, but probably not easier.

He would ask, when I’d call every month or two, if I’d carried on the business or was even considering it. “You were the brains, Fred,” I’d say, “and I was the grunt. Too many water heaters hooked up backwards, I guess.” “Learn on the job,” he’d advise. “Good money!”

Folks ask me all the time for the name of a good handyman. I tell em Freddie’s gone and there isn’t anyone I know. Although, since the recession, most of the house builders are available. Until the economy heats back up, there’s probably a glut. Just costs twice as much as Freddie…

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The National Rifle Association, just after the latest mass killing of school children, suggested, without embarrassment, that what was needed wasn’t less guns but actually more guns.  If only the teachers had been armed, this tragedy might have been averted.  I know we live in a logic free world now so this kind of thinking shouldn’t really come as a surprise to all of us.

I would like to propose to the NRA and to the GOP that we just couldn’t agree more.  Actually, I would like to propose that we do agree more.  In fact, we have a modest proposal to make, which is this:  give a gun to every citizen regardless of age, religion or sex.  More guns equal less violence, right?  Well then, let’s put our money where our ammo is, a gun for everyone.  You can pick it.  Deer rifle, .22, 44 magnum handgun, AK-47 assault rifle, a bazooka even.  Okay, maybe not a bazooka.  But anything that can shoot a bullet, a dum-dum, a shotgun slug, you name it, it’s on its way complements of the government.

If an armed teacher could have saved those kids, think what a fully armed classroom of children with guns could have done.  Chopped the shooter up like a vegetable grater, that’s what!!  So call your congressman, call your NRA lobbyist, call the lady with the alligator purse, let’s get this done.  Making America Great Again won’t get accomplished with wishy-washy measures.  Arm America!  But … watch out for the crossfire!

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Too Small to Succeed

My pal Joey who’s been laid off now, oh, about 5 years ever since the recession hit back in Ought Eight, has turned from cynical to bitter. Used to be he hated his employer for poor wages and lousy benefits, now he hates the government for no wages, no benefits and no jobs, not even ones he hates. He spends a lot of his day e-mailing buddies, myself unfortunately included, screeds against the President and Congress (mostly the Democratic side, what he calls socialists and traitors and worse) rather than look for work.

I always wonder why he doesn’t spend his bile on Wall Street and the banks who sent the economy on a wild ride of greed, which finally plummeted to terra firma, crashed and burned and pulled the economy into the smoldering crater with them, but I guess you got to blame somebody.

“Joey,” I say. “Now that you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, how come you don’t become a Job Creator? Be the capitalist you dreamed of being? Start a bizness?” Joey looks at me with pity and shakes his head in disgust. “You and this damn government, Skeeter. You’ve set up regulations and roadblocks. Too many taxes. How’s a Little Guy like me gonna get off the ground? It’s like running a race carrying a 50 pound concrete block. Guaranteed to fail.”

“Too small to succeed, that it?” I can’t help saying. “They all started out small, Joey.”

Joey’s exhausted a long stretch of unemployment compensation. He’s pulling 401-K retirement money too early to live on and that ticks him off, all those penalties. Michelle, his wife, works part time at Jolene’s Beauty Salon, but even with tips, she’s barely clearing minimum wage. Course, Joey’s against raising minimum wage because if he ever did start being a Job Creator, that 50 pound block holding him back would be 60 pounds.

Joey’s never going to work again everybody but Joey knows. He’s retired at 55, another casualty of the Recession, and for his remaining years he can aim his wrath at the illegal immigrants who take the jobs he might have wanted, at the government which ended his unemployment compensation with only two extensions, at the IRS for taxing his 401-K withdrawals, at his old employer for sending jobs overseas, at the people on welfare who’d rather take a handout than look for work, at the women who’ve joined the labor market….

The American Dream withered on the vine for Joey and his fellow victims. He doesn’t have Clue One why it all went wrong, but he’s angry and he’s scared. I don’t know how many Joeys are out there, but too many, that’s for sure. The party’s over for them. Now all they got is the Tea Party and that one doesn’t look like much fun, not for Joey and certainly not for the rest of us. Even on the South End, anger is contagious.

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The Coming Storm

Sheila’s Salon was abuzz last Wednesday over a newspaper article Rhonda brought in. “Did you girls know the Equal Rights Amendment never passed?” Ronald, magenta locks thrown back by his horse laugh over by the shampoo sink, hands full of Mrs. Amundsen’s blue curls, snorted, “Oh my, now the cows are out of the barn.”

Rhonda asked the room what exactly did this mean?? “Are we second class citizens? Can we vote? I mean, what the hell?” Mrs. Amundsen’s discomfort at the sudden heat of what had been an enjoyable conversation about the wonderful summer weather was palpable, at least to Ronald, but nevertheless, he gleefully added fuel to the fire. “Oh, honeys,” he said in mock sincerity, “haven’t you heard the news? You’re the weaker sex, darlings. We he-men can’t just hand out equal rights like bon bons, now can we?”

Sheila, worried that things were soon going to be out of hand, tried to throw cold water on Ronald’s hot jibes. “Of course we can vote. If they’ll let Ronnie’s husband vote, for heaven sake, they’ll let anybody vote.”

“Whoa there, girls! No need to make this personal. I didn’t have a vote on the Amendment when it failed. I was still at my mother’s breast.”

“She probably should’ve bottle fed you, Ronald,” Rhonda fairly shouted. “Ijust can’t believe, in the 21st Century, we don’t have equal rights. I mean, we got civil rights passed. Slavery’s over, I thought.”

Mrs. Amundsen was picking at her pink vinyl cape nervously, muttering, “My my my now.” Even Jenny Fowler, the hot yoga instructor of the cool demeanor, was growing agitated. “Are you sure it didn’t pass? I mean, why wouldn’t it?”

Revolutions grow from small events. Later, when heads are rolling down the chute, no one will remember — or much care — that Sheila’s South End Salon might have been Ground Zero for the superstorm that overshadowed the Great Recession and the Oil Wars. A woman scorned, once she realizes, well, Lord help the rest of us….

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The Consultant is In!

I was chatting it up with my neighbor today who bought the old farm next door. He’s been out of work awhile but said he’d been doing a little consulting this past year. Consulting. I like the sound of that. Conjures up visions of bathrobe and slippers, a cup of joe and a home computer screen. “Sounds good!” I offered, semi-envious. “Well, he countered, “I don’t know about that … but it’s good to make some money for a change.” Indeed. And isn’t that the question for all us South Enders: how much money versus how much work? Or, as I opined to my neighbor, “what’s the bottom here? What’s the LEAST amount of money we need to live so we can have the time to do just that?” Live. Sure, it’s probably germane to a more global audience too, but … let’s be honest. This is THE burning question on the sloth-induing South End. How much is Just Enough? Wen do we draw a line in the beach sand and say, No Mas!

Admittedly it’s a slippery equation, one fraught with peril. Foreclosures, collection agencies, repossessions, divorce, severe depression. But obviously we didn’t move to the end of a skinnyass island off the beaten career path looking for a management position with a high tech startup. Those people RETIRE here. The rest of us, we’re hoping to retire here too — just a lot earlier. Without a pension, without a 401-K plan.

Let’s just say it’s a high wire act without the safety net. Sure, plenty of us slipped. Hit bottom and couldn’t scrape ourselves off to try again. You don’t get second chances down here. The bank isn’t going to offer grief counseling and Tyee Store isn’t going to extend credit. It’s a hard road when you screw up. Paradise when you balance the risk to the reward. Point is, you want to keep both in equilibrium. You need help, call me, I’m available for consultation.

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