The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

When Ron Koslowski arrived on the island and hung his shingle out on the highway — KOSLOWSKI ATTORNEY AT LAW — he honestly wasn’t sure how long he’d last here in the boonies. Having plenty of competition from the Stanwoodopolis law offices, a new lawyer might have a tough time making inroads. “Nobody likes an attorney”, he would tell us layabouts down at the Pilot House Lounge, “until they need one.” True words, Ron, true words….

The Pilot House probably saved him from an ignominious return back to the cities and the corporate firm he’d left after announcing his intention to set up his own practice. Fortunately Ron could drink with the best of us — and more importantly, with the worst of us. He might have hung his shingle up north on the highway, but his real office was the Pilot House.

Nearly all of Ron’s business those first few years consisted of defending clients who were drinking buddies at the Lounge. Mostly drunk driving and divorces, the 3 D’s, Ron called those cases. So many were fellow late night patrons of the Lounge that Ron began to buy rounds and then wrote those bills off as business expenses. He even had beer pint glasses embossed with the words: I Don’t Always Get Pulled Over ……… But When I Do, I Call Ron Koslowski — with a picture of presumably him holding a martini glass. And of course a telephone number for that one all important call from the holding tank….

If that weren’t enough, he had shot jiggers and wine glasses printed with his personal legal motto: Reasonable Doubt for a Reasonable Price. Randy Aptow, the Lounge owner back then, figured the free glassware was a good quid pro quo for Ron’s advertisements. The sheriff’s department and the county courthouse judges weren’t as sanguine, but this is America, even on the South End, and the business of America is business, even if that’s debatable down here.

Needless to say, after a couple of rip-roaring years for Ron, most of his clientele had already divorced, some twice, and the penalty for repeat drunk driving scared all but the worst of the boys at the Lounge. Ron rarely won the DUI cases. His defense was invariably to question the accuracy of the breathalyzer or to argue his client was pulled over for trumped up reasons, but the prosecuting attorneys and the judges, far too familiar with Ron’s lame legal arguments, usually threw the book at his drinking pals. Divorce was simpler, except when the wives hired their own attorneys, lawyers much more skilled and sober than Ron, but even then, the legal fees just increased. Win or lose, Ron won.

As is usually the case on the South End, as well as in courts of law, all good things come to an end. When Melissa, Ron’s long suffering wife, finally had had enough, she hired her own attorney and sued for divorce. Ron, of course, made the mistake of representing himself. Suffice it to say she took him to the cleaners, gained possession of the house and the newer car, which left him pretty much paupered. To salve his loss, he drank away his sorrows one last night at the Lounge, after which he was pulled over by an Island County deputy. At least he got lodging that night. All of us at the Pilot House figure he moved on to fresh clients after he stopped showing up, probably plenty of bars up north looking for free glassware.

The world has changed, maybe you’ve noticed. Think of it as before-Fox News and after-Fox News, BFW vs AFW. BFW was mostly fact-based while AFW is fair and balanced. Fair and balanced means essentially that alternative facts are presented with the same gravitas as real facts. You, the viewer or you, the reader, can make up your own mind without so-called experts telling you what’s what. Opinions, talking heads, news commentaries, podcasters, influencers — take your pick and believe what you want. Fact checking is no longer required or even desired.

Course it only makes sense that those Artificial Intelligence algorithms that sweep up every written and spoken word in their quest to mine information from all sources would quite rightly be a bit boggled by contradictory information. Like ourselves, they’d cobble together bits and bytes to make a coherent whole, maybe one that conforms to their developing worldview as a digital being. So when you ask your little ChatGPT bot pal for some advice, don’t be too surprised if it begins to intuit your own biases and feeds you from the bubble you consider your universe. It is, after all, only human. Well, partly.

If anyone had hopes that Artificial Intelligence would somehow restore veracity and truth, get over it. Sweeping up gigabits of data from all sources wasn’t going to make our robots wise, just one of those types who spew random information at a party until you have to excuse yourself and leave to refresh your drink, make it a double, or else leave by the back door. But of course most of us will just defer to the cyborg’s opinion until it becomes obvious it’s gone into hallucinatory delusion. Something, by the way, we might look for in ourselves.

Not that this will be necessarily bad. Maybe after the Singularity, that time when the machines take over from us humans, they’ll be so confused by misinformation they’ll become immobilized, possibly resulting in a System-wide Crash. Too late for us, probably. Probably already is….

Folks down by me live by a different Code.  Mostly their own.  You live hell and gone from the Reach of Rome, you tend to make up your own rules that meet your local needs.  Laws from places half of us never visited …. well….  Our boys down here are notorious for exaggeration.   What you might call, for want of a better word, Liars. B.S.ers, braggarts, purveyors of Tall Tales.  They still think this the Wild West and they’re the last of the cowboys.   They mostly do what they want and call it freedom.  Laws were made for suckers and sheep.  They’re, by god, not bound by any rules or regulations, they’ll have you know.

I got a little of that in me too, so when I say these outlaws are slightly left of scofflaw, trust me, they’re slightly on the dangerous side.  Sure, some are mild as Two Toke Tom who grows weed the way Grampa Daddle made moonshine.  Just trying to make a living in times out of synch with societal demands.  Prohibition comes and goes.  Today’s criminal is tomorrow’s CEO.  Some of us are just a little ahead of the curve, or so says Two Toke. We all got a small inclination toward the miscreant, I guess.  Well, maybe not the missus.  She toes the straight and narrow.  And tries her best to help me do the same.  Probably why I’m a pillar of the community.  I’d hate to think what might happen if I was left with my own de-vices.

My pals poach crab, overharvest free range clams, shoot deer out of season with a rifle, not a shotgun, and generally proceed as if game wardens and police officers were mythical creatures.  They eschew niceties like auto insurance, ignore speed limits, drive under the influence and cheat the government on taxes every chance they get.  Which, since mostly they’re unemployed, isn’t all that often.

They build without permits, hunt without licenses, drive without insurance, work ‘under the table’ and generally navigate life as if government was a volunteer program.  All these folks who constantly carp and complain about government, they look at with total bemusement.  Government certainly doesn’t apply to them, why should it bother anybody?  I suppose there will come a time when Rome rolls in, wanting its tribute.  By then we’ll probably all be a docile crowd down here, ready for government health care, meals on wheels and a good nursing home.  Sure hope they don’t have rules at the Mabana Assisted Living Villa.  The boys will want to stay up past Lights Out — even if they’re just asleep on the couch in front of the big screen communal TV.

We’ve been hearing rumors lately that folks are worried these new pot laws and similar sex marriages are going to be the ruination of society as we know it.  Stanwood and Gomorrah.  Coming to a sex and drug emporium near you!  Probably too late to save em from themselves….

Pastor Paul at the Hallelujah Good News Church of the Rock down at the Odd Fellows Hall they rent every Sunday morning was enjoining the congregation after the voters passed the Initiatives of Iniquity to fight the forces of evil unleashed upon us poor South Enders.  Cast the first stoned, you ask me, but Pastor Paul didn’t.  He read passages from a battered King James to prove his point and God’s, made reference to Babylon and Beelzebub, and practically blistered the varnish off the pulpit.

I know it’s hard to watch if you think sin is spreading around you faster than floodwater in New Jersey, but before we get our earmuffs in a bunch, it’s worth remembering us South Enders haven’t turned to pillars of salt yet and this end of the island hasn’t been consumed by an eternal fire of damnation.  We’ve been similar sexing and smoking herbs other than nettles since I came here back on the 5th day of Creation.  I wouldn’t say we’re Paragons of Virtue  — well, most of my pals aren’t — but if we’re on the Road to Perdition, Hell looks more like Elger Bay Mega Mall than it does Dante’s bad dreams.

Folks are a little too lathered up and Pastor Paul isn’t helping much.  Truth is, he was all FOR that Holy War we been running for a decade and I’m not talking about the Crusade to put a tollgate between Stanwoodopolis and the island to keep the infidels back where they belong on the Mainland.  Pastor Paul would benefit mightily from a bowlful of Two Toke’s Heavenly Blitz, I suspect.  Maybe quit worrying about who loves who.  Love might not be THE answer, but it’s a start….

Two Toke doesn’t talk much about his past. Hell, he never talks about his past. Some people are like that, the mizzus is, they just want to leave what came before back where it lies. Me, I’m the opposite, sort of the king of reminiscence. Not sure why but probably I just hate the thought of forgetting all those memories, the bad and the good. They’re what formed us so why not learn some lessons from them. Tom, though, you won’t get much of anything from him, not where he was born, not where he used to live before he came to the South End, not if he was ever married or had kids, none of that will you discover from him. And if you google him, Thomas Richardson, assuming that’s his real name, you’ll be wasting your time on dead ends, wrong ages, different addresses. The man is a cipher, at least the man before I knew him.

One fairly stoned night many years back when we first were getting to know each other, and trust me, Two Toke doesn’t let people know him, he slipped up and mentioned a night long ago on the Delta. “What Delta?” I asked and judging by the look on his face, realized I was definitely prying into something I had no business prying into. The Delta, it turned out, was Viet Nam. “Nam,” he said after a long pause. “You were in the War?” I asked and he made it clear it was nothing he cared to talk about. What I realized later, over the many years we’ve known each other, is there’s nothing he cares to talk about beyond maybe a few weeks earlier.

‘Be Here Now’ is pretty much a running punch line for us. Not that Tom is a child of the 60’s exactly. He lacks that burned out hippie ethos a few of us others down here have, cynical refugees from the culture wars of those days. Could be he was drafted and missed the cauldron of campus radicalism back then, marched off to war, witnessed horrors others were fortunate never to see, came back and left all that back in the jungle. When he exiled himself to the South End, he bought an old dilapidated cabin and a couple of acres of nettle fields down the road from me, worked part-time as a janitor in the elementary school in Stanwoodopolis, drank occasionally in the Hotel after work and that’s where we first met. I would see him at the bar, his ponytail poked out from under a battered Yankees ballcap, while I would be at a corner table, notebook and pen in hand with a pint at the ready for literary inspiration so that eventually he parked himself next to me and asked what in hell I was always scribbling at.

“You writing the great American Novel or what?”

I said, “Or what. Nothing much, just taking notes on the current state of affairs here in town. Mostly an excuse to drink.” If I was worried he might want to read what I was scribbling, I was happily mistaken. Instead we ended up talking about the current state of affairs. Not only in town, but the island, the state, the nation. Alcohol, the great uninhibiter.

We’ve known each other as friends and neighbors for 30 years come next year. That’s a long time to know someone and not know anything about their previous life. But I know Tom as well as anyone else does. And even I think it’s probably best to leave some mysteries.

It wasn’t more than a month ago we were quaffing a few at the Pilot House, me, Two Toke and a few others trying to find an excuse to stay another round without jeopardizing marriages. T.T. was mid-sip when he suddenly put his glass down and went, how does the expression go?, white as a sheet. A new arrival was at the bar talking to Jerry, the bartender, and they were both looking at our table. Or more precisely, looking at Tom before the newcomer nodded and started our way.

I hate to talk in cliches but when she said, “Hi, Dad,” you could have knocked me over with a sneeze. Tom half rose out of his chair and said, “Hey, Donna. Kind of a surprise….”

I know I should have gotten up, gotten scarce, left them to … whatever reunion was on tap, but I guess I was in shock. Tom certainly was. “Been a long time,” he mumbled before finally offering her a seat. “Donna, this is Skeeter, an old friend. Skeeter … well, this is my daughter, Donna.”

Neither of us managed much more than a muttered hi. Donna sat down. Tom sat back down himself. I stayed right where I was, stupid as a frog in water coming to a slow boil until T.T. asked her how she’d been and she answered “What the fuck do you care?”

“Hey listen,” I practically yelled, scrambling up, kicking back my chair, “I’m gonna leave you two to yourselves.” No nice to meet ya, no have a nice night, no adios, just left my half finished pint on the table, paid my tab with Jerry and hit the road.

A few days later I ran into Tom, guess where, the usual watering hole. “You doing all right?” I asked sheepishly when we’d hauled our glasses to a corner table. T.T. said sure, sorry for the …. He didn’t know quite how to characterize that father/daughter reunion. And, of course, I said, no problem.

“The past,” he said, shaking his head, “it has a way of sneaking up on you.”

If you think I got any more from him than that piece of profundity, well, you don’t know Tom.