The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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 Saratoga Landscaping and Lawn Service used to be Don’s Lawn and Brawn. Don had a couple of used Sears 22 inch cut rear-baggers, an overhauled Stihl weedeater for the hard to reach places and the ditches, plus a little edger that a few of his fussier clients required. He hauled all the tools of his trade in a 1978 Datsun flatbed pickup with a handlettered sign on each door DON’S LAWN & BRAWN 387-LAWN.

Don worked six, sometimes seven days a week, rain, shine or fog, but he invariably fell behind when the monsoons came in the late spring, early summer, and never really caught up until the droughts of August. Shortly after, his workload dropped in the opposite direction as the barometer that usually stayed high until October.

When his knees started to go, about 1996, he bought his first rider. 4 speed, 40 inch cut, headlights, battery start. And he hired his next door neighbor’s dropout kid to mow half the clients with a self-propelled Honda model, figuring he’d upgrade to another tractor if everything worked out. New folks were retiring here by the droves, folks who wanted their postage stamp lots immaculately manicured … by someone other than themselves. Retirement meant just that — retire the damn mower.

Bizness picked up, his neighbor’s punk kid absconded with his new self-propelled and the other tools and Don went through a series of similar help, young guys with poor work ethics and low ambition coupled with various substance abuse issues. Clients were irate and business, being mostly word-of-mouth references, suffered. And Don sure didn’t want to go solo any more. Retirement looked further away the more he yearned for it.

Fortunately he hired Miguel, a 35 year old ‘immigrant’ from Ensenada. Worked hard, didn’t complain about the poor wages and didn’t steal Don’s tools, didn’t do drugs on the job and spoke enough English to communicate with the clients. Before long Miguel’s uncle Juan signed on, then most of his extended family entered the U.S. Labor Force through the backdoor of the South End.

Don retired a year ago, sold the business to Uncle Juan and now most of the lawn services up and down the island are done by a lawnmowing cartel in fleets of shiny red Ford 150’s with professional lettering on the side DON JUAN’S LAWNS. They’re reliable, they’re honest, they’re industrious, they’re the new Americans, documented or not, simmering nicely in the South End melting pot.

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Psychiatrists this week announced the discovery of a new mental malady: Sluggish Cognitive Tempo. This apparently is a sub-order of Attention Deficit Syndrome and is sure to raise a controversy in the medical community as to whether it is really a proper psychopathological disorder. Apparently it is characterized by slow learning, chronic daydreaming and lack of interest in the world around the victim. Patient, I mean. What we used to call Stupid before we became more touchy-feely and enlightened.

No doubt the next step is a pharmacological breakthrough, something akin to coffee, but not as potent as crystal meth, and hopefully (unless you’re the pharmacology company) not overly addictive. Bring the patient back to reality gradually, no point trying to make it TOO interesting. This is great news for the South End, you no doubt realize. All those artists and musicians have been struggling for years with stargazing, cloud watching, daydreaming and other similarly wasteful idle pursuits. We just didn’t have a name for it, but now, thanks to psychiatric research, we not only have a name and a diagnosis, but possibly the hope for a cure.

With counseling and the proper drugs, we South Enders can imagine the day when our idyllic but lachrymose lives are given new leases. Jobs, responsibilities, duties and a focused commitment to meaningful undertakings. Finally we can put down the banjos, drop the paintbrushes, store the blank canvases in the cellar and look forward to normality. We can drive to our satisfying new job at Boeing, we can balance a checkbook, we can scan the TV guide for exciting new programs, we can do all those things the rest of you take for granted, but for us were always far far away.

It is undoubtedly a New Day down here. We’re going to take that sluggish cognitive tempo we’ve been sleepwalking with most of our adult lives and kick it up a notch or three. Multi-task! We’ll be able to juggle half a dozen activities at once while making appointments on our new cellphone for job interviews and doctor visits and financial planning and car repairs and ….well, I get goosebumps just thinking about it. The future is wide open, just like my eyes, and I trust you’ll understand if I don’t finish this, but hey, I haven’t got time for literary nonsense now. It’s a big world out past the garden and I’ve got to make up for lost time so if you’ll excuse me, I have to go march to a similar drummer ….

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Now as you might’ve guessed, I’m almost always in favor of any and all new technologies, unproven or not. Get those government regulations out of the launch path and let the good old profit motive dictate the future. As we well know in this Job Creating culture we love, let the marketplace rule. If you can’t trust a capitalist, who CAN you trust?

I just read they got a new 3-D printer for creating new life forms. Program in a funky DNA sequence , load up the amino acid mix and hit a button. Pretty quick you got an iridescent houseplant or a 6 legged, 4 eared puppy, whatever you want. Experiments are fine. A few new viruses introduced out among the billions we got already the old fashioned way, well, what’s the harm? Might be some human-friendly ones in there and that hobby lab you got turns into the next venture-capitalized pharma farm. The possibilities are endless. The profit potential immense! Sure, the naysayers will worry about some 3-D printout creating the next pandemic, but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. You think God didn’t roll the dice?? Check out some of these South Enders we got down here ….

I heard this week Amazon wants to use drones to deliver their goods. The Star Trek teleporter isn’t on-line yet, I guess, so this is their fallback. Oh, I suppose the Luddites will fight this. Skies filled with more drones than starlings. Collisions in congested areas. Free gifts for the earthbound after the crashes, if nothing else. Put some armaments on these birds and UPS package theft on unguarded porches ought to drop significantly.

The future is in the rearview now, closer than it appears maybe, but we’re accelerating fast and there’s no time in this multi-tasked, info-deluged world to start worrying about the dearth of deep analysis. Fasten your seatbelt, download a program for an experimental lunch and keep your twitter feed on 24/7. It’s a brave new world and you don’t have the luxury of fear. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

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Once again our intrepid entrepreneurial spirit has raised its banner on the globally connected South End. In the face of a newly invigorated craft distilling industry across the state, our own liquor suppliers have risen to the challenge. Admittedly hobbled by government laws and regulations set by the State Liquor Board and unable to advertise for fear of police intervention, they have been forced to raise the bar once more in order to compete with their well-funded and legitimate adversaries.

Just last evening I was huddle at my kitchen table with Whisky Bob, a moonshiner of some repute down here for his double distilled mashes, a white lightning so powerful Bob enforces his No Smoking ordinance with serious vigilance. If a ‘client’ ignores the admonition, Bob tells them the story of old man Jeffries who tried lighting his cigarette with a mason jar of High Octane Hooch open in his lap driving home to his doublewide in O-Zi-Ya. He survived, but his eyebrows never grew back and without going into gory graphics, let’s just say the miracle drug Viagra was of little use thereafter. For years he would relive the explosion every time he struck a match. The Post Stress became so severe he gave up smoking altogether.

Whisky Bob tells me he’s ready for the Next Stage of distilling, gonna dial back the alcohol a mite and go for the niche market in boutique boozes. I said it sounded like a great business plan, and Bob leaned in conspiratorially, afraid, I guess, Cost-Co might have the place bugged.

“Nettles,” he said. “Nettles?” I asked. “Nettles,” he repeated, louder, maybe thinking I needed hearing aids. Nettles. I pondered it a moment. Bob said he remembered that Heavy Nettle Ale I’d made two years ago, a fine year for the green crop, good crisp bite, a telltale aftertaste that tickled the tongue. Nettles, I finally agreed. Slow Food Movement, utilize the area agriculture, stop global warming, drink Local, save the planet. “Bob,” I said, tilting a glass of his double distilled, “it sounds like a winner! And I don’t think it’s the Everclear talking.”

This week Whisky Bob will begin the harvest. I told him my own organic nettles were available if he needed more than his backyard yield. By summer Bob should have his flagship mash aged to perfection. Jack Daniels, good luck to ya….

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