The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Now, a lot of us South Enders look a little dubiously at Dad’s Day. It sounds suspiciously like one of those STING operations for deadbeat dads delinquent on child support payments. Get us all down here, then throw the net. We can already see the headlines in the Conway Chronicler: South Enders nabbed in Paternity Sting.

NOT that I’m saying I’m a deadbeat dad. I know being an artist and a banjo picker sort of doesn’t help the image, but we all been down on our luck. Little Jimmy understands that. His mom’s a little less forgiving, but when the CD sales start rolling in and the big art commissions, she’ll change her tune.

What with all these studies proving that more than a quarter of men in this country aren’t the genetic fathers of their children, Fatherhood on the South End has taken on a whole new meaning in these modern times we live in. DNA tests take all the romance out of relationships, you ask me. The old family tree’s got some extra branches now. And I guess that’s good, but it sure takes some of the mystery away from sparking and courting. Personally I don’t care to find out half the South End String Band is related.

But it IS father’s day coming up. Won’t be long before dear old dad is just a Test Tube in some sterile lab. Sample # 74 Double X, blue eyes, dark hair, long fingers for the banjo. I like to think I got more to offer than a Petri dish. Although, Little Jimmy’s mom might not agree.

The Band was thinking of maybe lobbying for Father’s Day being a day of amnesty. You know: Give a Dad a Break Day. Or even a whole month. NOT that I’m saying the boys down here are looking for a way to skip the June payments. We were just thinking a little breathing room ….. you know, til the CD sales pick up.

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Clyde stopped by our place yesterday, wanted to know if I wanted some wood flooring. Clyde’s notorious for scrounging lumber — beams, 2×4’s, plywood, chopped off rafters and joists full of nails — he takes it all, he and his partner Fred. They’re true South Enders, no building parts are too unworthy for future projects. No oddly shaped root or burled tree trunk couldn’t be imagined as a trellis or a doorway or a garden gate. Their greenhouse/apartment is a testament to homesteader ingenuity, from the recycled plumbing for a radiant heat floor to the gnarly limbs of a cedar tree that frame a window made from sliding glass door panels. The roof is raftered with bridge beams and salvaged lumber, all covered with earth and plantings, a green ecosystem.

So when Clyde asks if I want some wood flooring, red lights go off and a siren shrieks deep down in my hippocampus. “You don’t want it yourself?” I ask, meaning, what’s wrong with this flooring if you boyz are turning it down? Clyde avows how they don’t need flooring and anyway, it’s all mismatched remnants. Like they don’t have mismatched remnants from one end of their property to the next??? “Use em for furniture,” I advise. “I took my leftovers and made cabinets and bookcases, banjos, hell, it’s hardwood.”

“We’re jammed up,” Clyde says sadly. “Stuff we got now is getting powder post beetles. We couldn’t use it all in the rest of our lifetimes.” Which is true! They’re beyond Scroungers now, heading toward Hoarders. It’s a fine line, I know, and only a packrat like myself who’s scrounged most of his life is qualified to define the slip from Collector to Psychopathology. Clyde, I diagnosed, had stepped back from the Abyss. Enough was finally enough. Clutter was one thing, tunnels to the kitchen and bathroom quite another.

No mas! There comes a time when a sane man knows implicitly to STOP. Before it’s too late. Before madness descends like a dark curtain blotting light and reason.

Today I picked up 10 boxes of hardwood flooring, enough to lift the front end of my truck. No, I don’t really need flooring. But, you never know, right? Now if I can just figure out where to store all this wood until I need it….

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I identify as a guy, a cisgender, actually, and yeah, I had to look it up. It means I kept the same sex as I got tagged with when I was born. I’m pretty happy with the designation, not planning to start experimenting at my advanced age, not having gender doubts, not really worried about others who do. Folks have to figure this stuff out themselves and it probably doesn’t help one bit that we’ve politicized the journey for these people, hard enough without the whackjobs taking their jabs, passing their laws and generally just being, oh, for want of a better word, un-Christian. Live and let live, do unto others, all that peace and love stuff, let’s just learn to get along, children.

I know, for some it’s really hard to accept the idea of a man wanting to be a woman … or vice versa. But c’mon, you’ve all known people who were caught in between hormones, tomboys, sissy guyz, macho women, some who loved people of their own sex, some who wanted to be the other sex, some who couldn’t make up their minds, some who loved both. It’s a complicated world, for sure, and if the pronoun preference bugs you, okay, I get it, but look, not too many years ago gays were relegated to the closet. For a long time it was illegal to love someone of your own sex. Seems like ages ago, but believe me, it was yesterday and worse, it still is yesterday for a lot of states in these not very united states.

Uganda just passed anti-gay laws, some that trigger a death penalty. We got nations that are anti-woman, much less gender bending. In this country we like to think of ourselves as enlightened. Progressive. Although progressive is now a pejorative word in plenty of sectors. Movies, the internet, television, streaming, you name it, pretty much an across the board acceptance of LGBTQIA2S+, the plus being a catch-all for whatever part of the sexual spectrum we missed. But now we have a political party that thinks demonizing Hollywood or Disney or permissive parenthood is a path to winning office in the Land of Grievances. Too late, boyz, your hormones are too toxic! Plus, you’re on the wrong side of history. Homosexuality isn’t going away. Trans aren’t either. The closet doors are open, fellas, and if you look close, you’ll find a few of your friends and family. You might even, if you open your eyes, find yourself. Scary, I know….

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Be careful what you wish for, all you anti-woke yahoos. A Utah library has taken the Good Book off its shelves after complaints that it is unfit for young readers. Pornographic and excessively violent, some concerned parents said and apparently the librarians agreed. These are tough times in partisan America so it should come as little surprise the ‘woke’ Bible-phobes are up in arms. Put another title on the banned list, probably just arouse the curiosity of those teenagers itching to get their hands on the burn list, see what the hub-bub is all about. What was Jezebel up to in Chapter 6?

Course, kids could just log on to their devices and google porn up while their parents are out lobbying their local libraries and PTA’s to keep undesirable books off the shelves. I’m sure these same parents insure their little precious doesn’t get his or her hands on violent video games or listen to music sung by people of uncertain sexual preferences. The world outside their insular home is a bit too dangerous these days when the latest surveys show 20% of teenagers checking the box regarding gender preference as Uncertain. Oh my….

Books and music and Hollywood, all that evil. Now the Bible. Where does a Mom turn? What can a Dad do? Well, for one, demand that their church quit teaching from pornographic and violent texts, that’s what. Keep those impressionable youths indoors, take away their devices, stop going to the library and definitely take them out of public schools and probably even private ones too if they’re affiliated with churches. Evil is everywhere now. Ignorance is not only bliss, it might be the only option.

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So a duck walks into a drugstore, picks up a box of Trojans and walks to the counter with it under his wing. The pharmacist rings up his purchase and asks, ‘you want me to put this on your bill?’ The duck, aghast, quacks, ‘I’m not that kind of duck!!’

So I’m walking into my own local drugstore and this kid and his girlfriend are palavering in the aisle I’m walking by. She’s crowbarred into torn designer jeans that must cost a hundred bucks and he looks like he shops Goodwill. ‘How would I know where to find them?’ she asks the boy, ‘I don’t shop here.’ At which point I leave eavesdropping range, get what I came for and head back up to the checkout line. The girlfriend is waiting some ways away, but says, loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘I’m not going to stand there too. You can do it by yourself.’

I queue up with the lad who has a package of Trojan condoms in his mitt and we’re behind two elderly ladies who are waiting for their turn at the register. It becomes a long wait, but finally the two women move to their respective registers and finally I say to the kid, “ya know …

when I was about your age I went into a pharmacy to buy prophylactics for the first time. You had to ask the pharmacist for them back then, didn’t want to leave them out for the prurient public. I was a little nervous, being a kid, so I asked the druggist for Trojans, just like you got right there, and the guy asks, ‘what size?’ Geez, what size? Not something I counted on, I guess figuring one size fits all or something, but finally I mumble, ‘I don’t know, mediums, I guess.’ ‘Naw,’ he says, ‘what size box, a dozen or what?’

I’m sure the guy pulled that on every underage kid who bought his first condoms from that store, probably howled with his buddies every time too.” My kid gives out a nervous little chuckle, not quite sure what to make of this old geezer telling his story, but he’s saved when the counterguy says Next. On the way out of the store, reunited with his girlfriend, I’m wondering if he’ll maybe tell her he bought the condoms but forgot to check what size, see maybe if she’d fall for it. Naw, I think maybe he had other things on his mind….

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