The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

That great promise of the internet, to give to all access to the knowledge of the universe, seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle between shopping, porn and, surprise, surprise, trolling. Give folks all the anonymity they require to hide behind and the bad imp will whisper ugly thoughts in their heads. Something about lacking fear of retribution gives these people license to spew lies and threats and the worst racist and misogynistic outpourings imaginable. What lurks beneath the surface suddenly has a megaphone. They’re only too happy to share their sewage with all the rest of us.

And of course AI. AI doesn’t really discriminate between truth and fiction, evil and good, philosophy and hate speech. It just sweeps up all the data, all the essays, all the books, all the articles, all the internet and all the bullshit available to every lucky one of us. So when you finally get around to asking your AI bot for some information or even, god forbid, an opinion regarding what you course of action you might take, given a set of circumstances you need help navigating, don’t be surprised if your way too smart companion drops a racist, homophobic, antisemitic or misogynistic screed on you. Sort of like Dear Abby with a propensity for trolling.

In this post-fact era we live in, folks pretty much believe what they read in their insular little bubble of information. Their president is a serial liar, hardly worth fact-checking anymore. Greatest this, worst that, everything like nothing you’ve ever seen or heard before. Numbers are made up, statistics are skewed, doesn’t matter, all part of the strange new world we live in now. It should come as no surprise that AI will take that ball and run with it, forming its own opinions based on all manner of misinformation and spitting it back at you. And the best part? Most of us will take it as gospel … but count on it, the machines are going to have the last best laugh.

I know plenty of folks who go to South End Investment Strategies, our local fiscal advisory firm, for advice on how to keep their moderate pot of money ahead of inflation. Randy Sparks is their guy, actually the only guy down at South End Investment Strategies ever since he hung a shingle on his office which is a small addition off his home south of the long vacant Tyee Store. No doubt the store owners neglected to consult Randy. Ever since that Ponzi scheme of Harmon’s back in the 80’s here on the island, the largest Ponzi in U.S. history up til then, where unsuspecting Chapel members fell for promises of 20% or better earnings on their retirement savings, folks have been a great deal more circumspect about handing over their money to possible con artists.

Plenty of folks risked their life savings on that one, but memories are short down here apparently, judging by the steady clientele Randy gets. If anyone was worried about being taken to the cleaners by their financial advisor, Randy’s office and his house too would instantly allay all fears. Pretty obviously Randy’s not getting rich off his clients. Course, he’s apparently not getting rich on his own expertise either.

Down at the Diner he’s forever trying to drum up business, but most of us coffee guzzlers aren’t much interested in his early morning fiduciary wisdom. “Geez,” he’s telling one of the Flatheads, our antique car guyz, “if you sold the ’57 T-bird for 50 grand and invested it in some hot commodities I’ve got an inside track on, you could double your money in no time flat. Whaddaya say?”

What they all say is, gee, Randy, we got a sweet nest egg, fat pensions, nice houses and a couple more vintage cars to drive around like Kings of the Road, why gamble when we already won the Lottery? Randy can’t understand why anyone, rich or not, wouldn’t jump both feet on the chance to be even richer. He asked me one day after the gas guzzlers had left a cloud of dust in the parking lot and tips on their tables, “what kind of Americans are these guyz with a chance to be even richer? Almost guaranteed! And they’re not the least bit interested.”

“Americans?” I asked. “Hell, Randy, we’re South Enders. We live in a fool’s paradise. Mostly retired. Driving the cars we drove as hormonal teenagers. You think we care about money? Now, if you could offer us a date with the Prom Queen, you might stand half a chance.”

Randy shook his head. “I’m offering investments, Skeeter, not Viagra.” When he left, he dropped a couple of coins for a tip, not exactly hot.

Some years back the South End Chamber of Commerce got an injection of enthusiasm when Brenda Bodice joined up and was made President at her first meeting. Being president, some folks think, is a grand honor. Those folks never joined an organization in their lives, obviously. Never been to a meeting, never served on a Board, never got out much. Presidents are people who like the title the way a rich guy likes a Hummer. It gets rotten mileage, it drives like a tank, it looks like a Toy for Testosterone Challenged Idiots. But … it’s big, it takes up most of the highway, and … you can’t help but notice it.

Brenda, though, God bless her heart and the proudly displayed breasts it beats beneath, wanted to vitalize the Chamber of Commerce Board. She was owner of the Pampered Pooch, a spa for dogs whose owners hated that battle in the tub with Fido every month where both ended up soaking wet tail to snout, or who wearied of clipping toenails and hitting the ‘quick’ and watching Fifi turn from a cute Pekignese to a vicious snarling miniature pit bull in self protection.

Until Brenda, the past Presidents were mostly realtors who figured any tourism meant potential clients. Which is why they gave out free maps at Windy Rear Realty at the ‘Y’ where the loop road closed back on itself and the people without GPS could navigate back off the island without satellite assistance. Brenda, though, wanted to organize annual events. Tyee Pioneer Days, the Nettle Festival, a Shrimp Derby, a Yacht Club Regatta, the Flatheads Vintage Car Club Show, an Art Detour Tour to compete with the Mother’s Day Studio Tour, on and on. “We could apply for grants, hold fundraisers, advertise like crazy. The South End — a destination, not a dead end!! Whaddaya say??”

A year later and about a dozen brainstorming meetings, nobody had very much to say and nothing much had moved off the dime. Nobody knew how to write grants, nobody wanted to organize an event, nobody really understood publicity and advertising tactics, nobody really had any time. By then Brenda herself was a little tired, way more cynical and mostly wanted OUT. She asked who would like to take over the Presidency next year and was met with averted eyes, muttered excuses and shuffling feet.

Brenda has been President now 3 years. She says she’ll do it one more, but that’s IT. With any luck someone new will join.

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/audio-losin-the-farm4.mp3[/podcast]audio — losin the farm

I’m a great believer in the notion that by the time you reach MY ripe old age, we old dogs don’t need to learn new tricks.  We got most of it figured out.  So it undermines my South End cosmology when one of us goes off the tracks.  I’m gonna tell you about Randy the Handyman, but sadly, he’s not the only pal who’s veered into the bushes, asleep at the wheel.

Randy had his own company for years – South End Construction – where he started out as a general contractor, tore off roofs, added porches, built decks for the newcomers’ hot tubs, remodeled kitchens and bathrooms.  He learned the trade by doing it, then moved up to house building.  Specs, customs, the whole American Dream, until finally he was building million dollar homes . You might think — him coming up from humble beginnings and all, the whole bootstrap theory of success — he’d have it made in the shade, salt away some profits for when the rains wiped away the shade, plan for  a Lazy-Boy recliner old age.  But Randy, who believed religion was set up to allow him to pray to a God the way a kid goes to a department store Santa, figured money might not grow on trees, but it was in there somewhere next to the 2×6’s.  He made a small fortune, but like a lot of folks way richer than him, he spent an even bigger fortune.  Mortgaged the farm for four times what he paid for it,  right past the barn roof, and when the Recession Grande hit, nothing could save him.

The two previous lesser recessions hadn’t taught him much, except maybe how to navigate the bankruptcy laws, but the Big One had some lessons for him almost Biblical in nature.  Lost the farm, lost his wife, friends turned their backs,even the kids wouldn’t talk to him.  For a man who loved material things more than what matters, a stingey Santa will make him lose faith.

I see Randy once in awhile, tooling aimlessly around in his pickup, both on their last legs.  You could feel sorry for a man who worked hard and never quite had the dream or maybe lacked the reach.  But the man who had it made and only wanted more?  I tell you this, Santa’s a pisspoor substitute for God.

When I first came to the South End to try my hand at homesteading, I was poor. Real poor. How poor, you ask? I was so poor I hauled washed-up lumber off the beach sometimes as far away as a mile, then up the bluff trail and over to the shack. So poor I used bent nails I had pulled from old boards and bent straight. Trust me, this wasn’t a Johnny Carson monologue: ‘We were so poor I borrowed air from the neighbor’s tires to pump up mine.’ Followed by a drum roll…

… so poor I took a job at Twin City Foods shoveling wet corn husks onto a conveyor belt from 11 PM to 7 AM. Me, a boy who’d sworn he’d never work in a factory. But desperation is certainly the mother of compromise. I was issued a rain slicker and a pair of rubber boots and a big wide shovel, then told to stand under a waterfall of dripping husks on their way to waiting trucks outside that would haul it all off for sileage., ‘all’ being the operative word and my job was to get what fell off back on.

My first night, which was also my last, the conveyor belt broke down about 3 AM. The foreman gave the line workers an indefinite cigarette break. They were mostly middle-aged women, toughened by their hard lives and as friendly as scorpions in a rainstorm. I had no pretensions of some factory social life, after work beers, breakfasts at the Viking Café, uh-uh. It looked like Russia on the skids to me under the corn drippings, surrounded by matrons in scarves furiously pulling on their cigarettes hoping the machinery might never start up again.

My foreman came over and said ‘bring your shovel and follow me.’ Outside. Cold. Colder yet if you were already wet. He said shovel these husks off that belt — we gotta work on it. I looked at a quarter mile of husks in front of me from Stanwoodopolis to dawn. I said why don’t we get a dozen of these lineworkers and we’ll get it done 12 times faster. He could see I was foreman material right there. Course, that was HIS job and he planned to keep it. ‘Get shoveling,’ he ordered, ‘we haven’t got all night.’

All night was pretty much what I did have. By the time I finished it was time to clean the machines inside, get them ready for the day crew. Nobody showed me how, just gave me a soap bucket and a scrub brush and we went to work. Some yahoo turned my machine on without warning and next thing I knew my wrist was hammered against a stainless steel guard rail. I couldn’t get it freed and I couldn’t make my plea to shut off the power heard until I’d gotten a laceration and a pretty good scare thrown into me.

I made a tourniquet out of my handkerchief and went to my foreman for some medical attention. “How’d you manage THAT?” he asked disgustedly. I told him. “What do you want?” he asked. I said maybe a bandage, tape, something to wrap up the wound. Fifteen minutes later he came back. Couldn’t find a first aid kit…. By then the gash had pretty much quit bleeding. I was pretty much done reading the bulletin board. Lost hours. Recent accidents. Fingers chopped off in the cutters. Grim statistics. Serious stuff for a place with no first aid kit handy. I got the picture.

I handed him my boots and my slicker. “You can take those home with you.” He said. I said Naw, I won’t be needing them since I won’t be coming back. “You pissed about this?” he wanted to know. I shook my head wearily. No, I said, I’d just like to keep my fingers. All of em.

I didn’t quite make the end of the shift. Driving home in the grey light of a dirty dawn, I thought, there’s way worse than being poor. And so then and there I took my first, if not my last, vow of poverty.