The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Maybe you’re one of the few people left who doesn’t listen to Taylor Swift’s meteoric music, just a person who reads about her and about her boyfriend, Travis Kelce,the Kansas City Chief’s star tight end. Music and the NFL. A mega pop star and a football hero, what could possibly be more American? What more, if you were a patriot, a true one, could you want for the Patriot Poster? Attractive kids, filthy rich, admired by millions, perfect smiles, perfect people. Who’d have thought they were out to destroy the country that loves them.

But they are doing just that! Well, not yet. Their insidious little scheme is still to be hatched, but don’t for one commie minute think they won’t set it into motion before the coming election this fall. If the Chiefs win the Super Bowl, bet your Grammy the pair will launch the most nefarious plot to take over the White House and possibly the Congress too. Trust the folks at Fox News, they see the conspiracy for what it is, nothing less than a brazen takedown of the government. Swift has shown her true colors in the past when she asked her fan base to register to vote. That fan base, unless you live in a colorless world devoid of social media, is huge, millions upon millions who would gladly obey her every command. And her command? To vote for Sleepy Joe. To vote to end democracy as we know it. To vote to destroy America! That’s what her command will be.

And the creepy part? They seem on the surface to be exactly what America idolizes, successful, clean cut, smart rich people. We all want to be them, don’t we? We all want what they want. We all want millions of fans, millions of dollars, millions of Instagram viewers. Don’t we? Of course we do. But don’t be fooled, don’t let those white tooth smiles deceive you. They want to destroy the very country that made them famous. That, my friends, is what is so terribly creepy.

Hits: 20

Hits: 11

Walter walked into the South End Diner last Friday morning carrying his Winchester 30-30 under his arm, a rifle meant primarily for hunting deer. He’s a card carrying NRA member and he takes his membership as seriously as a truck driving Teamster or an artist in the Camano Arts Association. Walter thinks the government wants to take his arsenal away from him and apparently, to protect his right to bear arms, he intends to bear them in the Diner.

Anita rolls her eyes from behind the cash register when he walks in with his unintentionally comic John Wayne swagger. “Whatcha got there, Pilgrim?” she asks. As owner of the café, she’s basically the sheriff, judge and jury in this one horse town. She makes the laws here and Walter, well … Walter’s not sure if the 2nd Amendment actually applies in the Diner with Anita at the City Limits, but by God, he intends to make a point and the Constitution should back him up and all the other Gun Toters in America and Anita, well, Anita can just shove it, he figures.

Like usual, Walter figures wrong. Anita holds a hand up like a traffic cop stopping cars. “We already killed the meat, Walter. Bacon, burgers, chicken, they’re dead. You want to be sure, order em well done. But … you aren’t hauling that gun in my restaurant, I don’t care if it’s loaded, empty or stuck up your keester, no way, no how. Comprende?”

Walter starts into quoting the Amendment but Anita’s out from behind the counter before he can hit the ‘right to’ and she’s got him by a twist of hair, turning him like a rusty screw toward the door and he’s yowling in pain so much she lets go. “Dammit, Walt, you give me indigestion, you really do. Give me the rifle and you can have it when you’ve finished your breakfast. But I can’t have the Wild West here with families and tourists. Take your protest to Stanwoodopolis, if you need to demonstrate. I got a business to run, probably into the ground, but I sure don’t need your help.”

In the end Walter’s politics took 2nd fiddle to eggs and bacon and his usual chicken fried steak. And Walter never brought his Winchester in the Diner again. But I don’t know about the Starbucks in town. Altho …there’s probably some enterprising entrepreneur who’s opened up a Barista Balllistic just to cater to the Walters of the world.

Hits: 16

Hits: 8

We were down at the Columbia Gorge trailhead last year, emptying bladders and filling water bottles. A woman emerged from the restroom and whispered to her companion in a conspiratorial voice, “There’s no flush.” Her friend shook her head in incomprehension. “Not working?” she asked. “No, there’s nothing but a hole.” “A hole?” her friend asked incredulously. “Just a hole in the ground and no flush.”

I felt like a Cro Magnon listening in on aliens from some advanced galaxy. How could they possibly understand my dependence on a polluting gas engine? Or something as totally primitive as a cellphone? These two debutantes had missed their exit, apparently, on the way to the Ritz. A pit toilet was incomprehensible and if it weren’t such a sordid subject matter, it would have made for the nucleus of many a future discussion over bridge and tea at the Country Club. “But where, Charlotte? where does it Go???”

Indeed. Not that our two ladies could answer that question in regard to the plumbing matrix from their Beverly Hills manse to the sewer system it connects to. What matters is that it be whisked away, out of sight, out of smell. We don’t know how things work anymore — but so long as they do, we don’t need to care. The world is less and less natural to us; it’s electrons and silicon, computerized and digitized, all packaged in Black Boxes that create the new universe.

The trouble is, Charlotte, we’re still of the natural world. Body functions, pheromones, appetites, all that genetic coding of mammalian evolution in a world that’s more and more alien to us. We’ll fix that eventually. We’ll adapt to the virtual world, the one we make not so much in our own image as a clever cyber image. The natural stuff will be obsolete soon and we’ll replace the old ‘parts’ with new and improved engineered ones. The robots aren’t going to take over us humans. Us humans are going to become cyborgs.

And Charlotte, the best part is you won’t need a flush. Or a toilet either.

Hits: 16

Hits: 8

You can tell volumes about South End history by examining our garbage evolution, sorta like counting rings on an old growth fir or the layer of ice deposits in a glacier. Science, a powerful tool. Well, for about half of us these days….

I still find old bottle dumps on our place — and back in the woods there are ravines that have entire cars, bedsteads, wringer washers, complete antique stores if this stuff wasn’t all rusted half away now. Back in the disco 70’s, we still drove our garbage up to Camano Hill where Frank guarded the official dump, pulling out future artifacts he brought home south of me, most of which are probably still there in a strata or two beneath the 21st century. Quite a few South Enders I know like to keep most everything they ever owned — usually just outside the back door where the nettles and blackberries claim it all. It’s an archeologist’s dream, for sure, someday centuries hence.

When the county closed the dump and sent Frank into an early retirement, we got a couple of coin operated dumpsters at our present location about 1980. Drive up, drop your quarters in, a lid lifted and a piston crunched what you tossed into an oozing pancake. Okay for a few trash bags, but not for, oh, roof shingles or construction debris. Pretty quick we got scales and semi-trailer size bins.

We even got primitive recycle. This was when you could sell aluminum and bottles back in town … and a lot of us penny pinchers did. At the dump you sorted your glass by color and watched out for yellowjackets drunk on stale beer and wine dregs. You had to tear the labels off all your cans, cut off the bottom and crush em first. The trash Nazis checked, believe me. A lot of work to throw away your bottles and cans back then…. Now it all goes into the Omni-Bin, paper, bottles, cans, boxes, all of it sorted out somewhere, somehow, by someone or something.

Most folks now have garbage pick-up, big green Waste Management trucks stop in once a week by the driveway, curbside service, E-Z payments. Me, I like hauling my own litter, oh, about every few months. Otherwise, how would I keep tabs on the island civilization? History, after all, is about half what we take to the dump. The other half is still back in the woods.

Hits: 16

Hits: 15

Hits: 12

Coming home the other day, I was listening to National Public Radio — mostly for further education credits — and they were talking about somebody working in the Inner City who went around to the homeless to offer them free health checkups. These folks were, as our reporter tactfully put it, probably on drugs or booze or were mentally ill or any combination thereof. Probably all three.

We always talk about the street folks this way. Poor sad souls who fell through the societal cracks, who might have, if not for drugs or booze or rock and roll or psychiatric reasons, might have been happy productive members of society. Almost exactly the prognosis for me and my neighbors here on the South End!! I mean, who wouldn’t want to work at Twin City Foods on the ‘line’, who wouldn’t rather drive to McDonalds and flip burgers for minimum wage, no benefits, no health insurance, no kidding???? Who wouldn’t want to go back to school, get that GED or a PhD. and become a 6 figure a year attorney?? You’d have to be CRAZY not to!!!!!!!!!! You’d maybe have gotten so dependent on drugs and alcohol this wouldn’t APPEAL to you! whatsoever, not at all!?

Holy Cowpie. Maybe our reporter never worked in a factory dawn to dark, 6 days a week. Maybe our Good Samaritan never thought of the American Dream as a rat race through the labyrinth of Hell in search of moldy cheese. Maybe our sociologists, who work for the universities, have full tenure and pensions and fat salaries, maybe they see unemployment or poor health care or an Insecure Future, as something, oh, I don’t know, something WORSE than a dead end job, a horrible boss, a joy-draining life on the assembly line of ‘respectability’.

Send those researchers, those professors, those academicians down here! Give me a couple of days, that’s all. After that, they’ll be on drugs or booze or sudden retirement. Probably all three….

Hits: 16