The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

We just bought a new car. Our meager attempt to prime the economic pump. I’d list off all the things this vehicle is capable of doing, from self-activating braking system to rear view camera, but it would be easier to list what it doesn’t do. You can’t crank down the windows. And without a computer, good luck diagnosing anything past a burned out light bulb. It doesn’t fly — at least I haven’t found the button that switches into Aero Mode — but essentially it’s a Jetson ride, mostly computer driven, sensor controlled and definitely futuristic.

And yeah, it cost what my first house cost. $24,000. That house was a used ghetto hacienda, built about 50 years before I won it bidding in a sealed auction offered by HUD. Course back then I was buying cars for 2 or 3 hundred bucks and yeah, the windows cranked up and down, although some didn’t work at all. Maybe this a story about inflation or maybe upward mobility or even, I hate to believe it, conspicuous consumption, I’m not sure. But it definitely is one about the American Dream of my days. A house, a car, a family with 2.3 kids. A job, a career, a one wage-earner family.

Mostly gone now, replaced by two wage-earners who make less than Ward Cleaver. The Beaver is hooked on Game Boy, Wally’s a heroine addict and June has become the primary breadwinner now that Ward has been laid off. They’re mortgaged to the hilt, retirement is postponed indefinitely now. I suspect they voted for Trump first go-round, figuring what did they have to lose?

Second go-round, I’m betting they did again. They still got plenty to lose. Maybe the American Dream was diminished before but now it seems like it’s on life support.

My new car has self-activating brakes when I’m headed into peril. America apparently doesn’t. Maybe too many of us are like this old fool, watching the rear view and not the detour ahead. I suspect when we get where we’re going, the levy’s gonna be dry.

Our favorite capitalist, Elon the Musk, just asked for and got a trillion dollar bonus package by the profit-happy stockholders of Tesla who voted over 75% to accede to the boy wonder’s demands. Atlas didn’t just shrug, Atlas jumped up and down like a pom-pom powered cheerleader on meth. At the same moment the government shutdown has left 41.7 million of us struggling to buy food, what with the SNAP food stamp program on indefinite hold. Judges have ordered it resumed but needless to say the Administration has appealed those decisions. Let them eat cake, some might say, but good luck affording that.

If you were to take that trillion dollars and distribute it to the 41.7 million Americans experiencing food shortages, each one of them would get 24, 500 dollars. That, needless to say, is a helluva lot of cake. Might even make bakers rich in these tough times.

I’m not against capitalism. Geez, I am a capitalist. Got my own bizness, believe it or not, pay B&O taxes, quarterlies, even hire help when needed. Call me a job creator, maybe not in the Big Leagues, but definitely an entrepreneur. The more I make, the more taxes I pay. If that were true for all of us job creators, we might have a more equitable distribution of wealth, but the tax laws are designed to let the rich, especially the really rich, slip the noose. Deferments, deductions, dodges — the intricacies of the IRS codes, written by the rich for the rich, definitely skew toward the favored elite. Their mantra is that they pay more than the poor so why pick on us?

Which, if you apply that, makes sense that they’re not bothered by shutting down the SNAP program. Blame the Democrats, they say. And the Democrats, who refuse to let Obamacare subsidies expire, another kick in the teeth of the cake eaters, claim the money they want to save is really going for tax cuts for the rich.

I don’t pretend to have the solution for our ever accumulating national debt, but I know this: the next elections will be about income inequality. The posters will be Elon in a gold Tesla with a ragamuffin kid nearby with outstretched hands. Even in America’s present Gilded Age, that disparity is more than a little unsettling. A trillion dollars for one man, not many of us think he’s worth too much more than a billion or two.

I had an old friend ask me late into our New Year’s Party last year if I had a banjo she could borrow so she could learn to play one. Since I had 5 of them hanging on various walls, I could hardly say no without seeming like some selfish materialistic you-know-what. Four were handmade by me, three of them within the year so I didn’t want to loan those. Another is my concert banjo, mostly rebuilt by me, so no on that too. And another was a 1920’s vintage Sterling, nice inlays, sweet action, pretty sounding little 5 string.

So I loaned her the Sterling. Reluctantly. And I still felt like a selfish materialistic you-know-what. I mean, jeez, she was a friend and I could help out and maybe she’d even learn to play the thing and maybe love playing it and the world would be a better place with another banjo picker. Stranger things have happened, believe me.

Two weeks later I get a call. The banjo, she says, has problems. Won’t hold its tuning. The 5th string peg is glitchy. She’s had her luthier pals look at it, but they don’t want to make adjustments. She wanted me to pick it up, fix it and return it when I had it ready. She sounded a little put-off that her loaner wasn’t up to snuff. I said bring it down and I’ll see what I can do, but I’d been playing it and I sure didn’t have those problems. She said snippily, it does now.

I adjusted some tuning pegs and glued the 5th string peg and she took it on home. It was clear she wanted a replacement banjo, but I was … well, you already know what I was. A week later she called to say the banjo was no good. Her friends had looked at it and they said it was no good too. She was bringing it back. I said okay. I was leaving but just leave it in the shop, door is unlocked.

When I got home, it was raining cats and puppies. There was a message on my answering gizmo telling me my banjo was leaned against the shop back door, outside, and it was raining so if I got this call, I might want to bring the banjo inside. At which point she laughed and hung up. I raced down and sure enough, my vintage 1920 maple banjo was soaking wet, the pot full of water, the tuners ready for some imminent rust.

Maybe a better man, a less materialistic you-know-what man, would’ve shrugged and said c’est la vie, it’s just a banjo, probably only worth $500, no big deal. But like I said, I’m not. And my friend, well, she isn’t my friend anymore. With friends like that I could start another band. Course, it would be mostly blues.