The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Back when I first tried to make a ‘go’ of my stained glass, I paid for a yellow page ad in the local phone book. You know, until there were half a dozen different books. And before the internet made them essentially obsolete … despite the proliferation dropped off on the ground by our mailbox. Invariably I got calls for window repair, safety glass, mirror, about everything glass related EXCEPT stained glass commissions, but … I answered every call and message machine and always they thanked me for getting back to them.

This, I sincerely believe, is our obligation as bizness people. But not, apparently, on the salty South End. Never was, never will be and I should know, having been here 45 years. The new arrivals, folks who maybe need a roof repaired or a toilet fixed, ask me why, when they’ve left a message for Bubba’s Fix-It Shop, Bubba never calls back. And neither does Clyde or Will or any of the other contractors down here or up island. They think maybe they’re being discriminated against by the locals, meaning us old timers. I say, naw, just good ol’ boys who never return calls when the economy is good, only when they’re out of work and the mortgage payment is overdue and the mizzus is threatening to leave them with the kids after the divorce is finalized.

I hired a neighbor to grade and gravel my driveway about a year ago. I’ve called him to see if maybe the gravel is sitting on one of those container ships I see anchored across Saratoga Straits over by Whidbey Island, you know, a supply chain issue. My guy never answers a phone and if you think he’s called me back, I got some prime nettle acreage you might be interested in instead of investing in cryptocurrency. Folks like to believe in the quaint notion of Shopping Local. Me, I gave up on that a long time ago. Nowadays I let my fingers do the walking, maybe not in the phone book, but on the internet. You want to Shop Loco, be my guest, but Bubba’s not calling you back.

One of the dangers of moonshine wit is that the so-called humor will be misunderstood. When I write about the neighbors, they think I’m actually writing about them. That’s the trouble with shotgun humor, it’s imprecise. I was really aiming at the house next door, not theirs. You know that, I know that, but try to convince them last night’s pellet blast rattling off their trailer’s aluminum siding was inadvertent. Gives them the willies and probably bad dreams too. But a writer has to write and a jokester has to joke, collateral damage be damned!

The Flatheads, our vintage car club in these parts, I have it on reputable reporting from a buddy who is one of the happy wrenchers, apparently feel that the name is derogatory, not funny. Now if you’re not an old car guy, you possibly don’t know that a flathead is an engine block before the modern engines we have today. Before the overhead valve engine, the Wankel rotary engine, before the hybrids, before battery powered Teslas. Flatheads were in vogue from the 1890’s to the 1950’s. They had poor compression ratios, weren’t very efficient, couldn’t really rev up like modern ones. Just so you know….

I’ll quit boring you with the history and mechanics of flatheads. All I want to get across here is that calling the car guyz Flatheads is sort of funny, at least to me. Kind of plays off the real thing and hints at, well, maybe these fellows are … okay, maybe it isn’t funny to them. I get that. Two Toke Tom thinks it’s funny, that’s good enough for me. And he’s an unofficial member of the club with his 1966 Volkswagen bus, the one you see with the peace sign and the faded Grateful Dead logo on the front end. Course, Tom thinks most everything is comical.

The point is, humor is in the eye of the beholder and yeah, sometimes a finger too. Just can’t be helped. And no, I’m not pissed off the boyz won’t give my 2010 truck full membership in their exclusive ranks. Has nothing to do with why I decided to call them Flatheads. Really, it doesn’t.

A few of us South Enders were over at the Marina’s Pilot House lounge, a hole in the wall tavern claiming “The Best Burgers on the Island.” Maybe when there wasn’t another restaurant…. It was a Monday night Seahawks game and the few sports fanatics who didn’t subscribe to cable and ESPN were hunkered expectantly at our formica tables drinking bottled beer from the cooler next to the cash register and a table selling golf balls and tees.

Must’ve been a total of three tables, the sum total of cable-deprived islanders. Ralph was grumbling that maybe we should’ve driven the extra ten miles to a bar with TV’s bigger than his laptop screen, but the game had started and the rest of us weren’t all that die-hard a fans and weren’t motoring off island in search of some sportsbar with 16 TV’s mounted strategically so every seat was Front Row. We had a front row right here. The beers were cold, the 19th Hole had advertised the ballgame and we’d taken the bait. Even Ralph accepted the finality of the decision and grabbed another bottle from the trap.

What I think we’ve accepted, all of us, is that sports are king in modern America and football is more popular by far than politics or American Idol. Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses, but he never imagined 15 cable channels of every sport from soccer to ping pong, bobsledding to skateboarding, rugby to kickboxing. As more and more of us couch potatoes hunker down over our laptops and bigscreens, eschewing any and all physical involvement with the real world, we seem addicted to almost anything that smacks of competition, whether it’s football or ballroom dancing.

One of our buddies here at the 19th Hole, Harold, never misses American Idol. He secretly thinks he’s a crooner and I have no doubt whatsoever he imagines himself under the klieg lights on the neon-lit stage, belting out Sinatra to 30 million crazed viewers who plan to vote for him. He’s elbow down with his Bud Lite watching the halftime show. Our team is losing by a field goal and maybe Jerry at the far table is warming up his kicking leg in his private fantasy.

We’re all lost in those fantasies these days. Doesn’t really hurt, I guess, but I suspect a lot of what we used to call real life is only glimpsed on the crawlers at the bottom of the screen while we’re all dancing with the stars. Way of the world, nowadays, I suppose, just living vicariously, way more losers than winners in the Big Game of Life. Although …. we all imagine ourselves the winners. Harold is singing some jingle from the last commercial as he heads to the cooler, only slightly off-key. I decide to have one more beer too. Might as well make it a duet.

If ignorance is bliss, half the country is living in Paradise now. If the level of ignorance proves any indication, Paradise must have tiers of Happiness with the upper level a joyful mix of Qanon believers and anti-science yahoos all blowing bubbles from the soapsuds in their heads. Every day I read a news feed (from the lamestream media) that boggles my already boggled mind. Jewish lasers in outer space starting forest fires, government distribution of crack pipes for addicts in today’s news, and now Marjorie Taylor Greene, House Representative for the great state of Georgia sounding the alarm, warning us of the coming of Gazpacho Police.

Trust me when I say the last thing in the world any of us want in this besieged nation is Gazpacho Police unleased on us citizenry. Hordes of storm troopers checking our pantries for banned Campbell soups, terrorizing housewives and restaurant chefs, followed by … what? Stew Surveillance, Casserole Cops, Chili Patrols, Bouillabasse Swat Teams or the dreaded Chowder Corps? No, the time has come to put our foot down and say No Mas! Get government out of our kitchen! Bad enough government wants to be in our bedrooms, but enough is enough, leave our kitchens alone!

Marjorie T. has sounded the alarm and hopefully her many paranoid followers will take up the call and march, ladles in hand, to the steps of the Capitol for more ‘legitimate political discourse’ even if it means hanging Pelosi and Pence. This Gazpacho onslaught must not stand! All patriotic Americans must defend the galleys of freedom despite the cost, reason be damned! Beat the pots, bang the pans, throw spices to the wind! The time is now, the enemy is at the kitchen door! Be brave, comrades, and sharpen that cutlery!

Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi! Geez, how many times did we hear that chant by Trump and the GOP about Hillary’s role in Libya as Sec. of State? A million? Or more? Followed by Lock Her Up! Lock Her Up! She voluntarily sat for Congressional investigations for ten hours, patiently answering questions by hostile interrogators who assumed that using a personal server for her phone was tantamount to treason. And in the end it was all a tempest in a teapot, no charges to file, no apologies forthcoming. And those emails? Well, it cost her the election when James Comey who headed up the FBI opened up a new investigation right before the time to vote. Thanks, Jim. Job well done.

Now that we know the Prez-in –Exile used his own cellphone, destroyed logs and memos, calendars and meeting notes, where are those outraged Senators and Representatives crying Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! The worm has turned but those worms haven’t. Hypocrisy seems to be the modus operandi of the day. Meanwhile the war drums keep pounding in Ukraine. Remember Ukraine? Donald told them he would withhold military aid unless they uncovered dirt on Biden’s boy, a quid pro quo that should have resulted in an easy case for impeachment but was thwarted a second time. You might think an omelette could be made from all those eggs on shameless faces but you’d be wrong. Russia may or may not be preparing to attack Ukraine — if they do, will anyone think back to Trump’s personal snit fit while the stakes have become incredibly high? If you think so, go to the back of the line.

The Teflon Trump may or may not get away with shredding and flushing evidence in what will no doubt become Toiletgate. Maybe only history will judge the man guilty, but unless you’ve been hiding in a fallout shelter these past years, you’ve been witness to a White House that ignores the law, flaunts morals, repeatedly lies, monetizes the office, rants and raves and threatens perceived enemies in a way that makes Richard Nixon look like a choir boy. Russia, if you’re listening, find his emails.