The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

If there was a place worse than homelessness itself, the While-a-While was it. Ancient RV’s, rusted out Winnebagos, Airstreams down on their axles — they all came to die, slowly sinking into the wetlands, grass up to their pitted aluminum windows that seldom opened anymore, a muddy trail leading to the communal restrooms and showers which occasionally all functioned but not usually.

In the summer the While-a-While offered tourists and fishermen some spaces, most without power, for $25 a night. Half the permanent residents had come and for reasons best left for late night binge talk, they ended up trapped there. Milt came 20 years ago in his reconditioned Cortez, a heavy 20 foot industrial RV built when gas was 24 cents a gallon but was now too much for Social Security retirement if he wanted to actually drive it somewhere else. And now it was a rusted relic, flat tires, busted front axle, long dead battery. Milt lived there with his menagerie of cats, half of them feral, all of them breeding like rabbits. Residents who’d ventured inside claimed the place smelled like one giant litter box over a gas burner.

Most inmates of the While-a-While gave Milt a wide berth. If familiarity bred contempt, with Milt it bred outright hostility. He was a hermit now among enemies, most of whom he’d alienated over slights so small they never really understood they were slights and so they concluded the man was a total asshole, a near universal assessment at the trailer park. If you were a dog owner, too bad if they growled or chased Milt’s feline herd. If your politics were left of Genghis Khan, too bad, you were a hopeless radical. If you drank or used drugs, he wrote you off. So what if he’d done more of those than half the park in a quarter of the time — he’d reformed, rehabbed and now was righteous as a born-again preacher.

Maybe we all end up where we deserve at the end of our ropes. If so, the poor souls consigned to the While-a-While probably wished they could have a do-over. But they were there, not to while awhile, they were doomed to quite awhile. With Milt as a neighbor.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2020 at 1:19 pm and is filed under rantings and ravings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.