The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

bubba’s outhouse service

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/a-christmas-carol-on-the-chinese-south-end.mp3[/podcast]a christmas carol on the chinese south end

  Back in the less consumer-driven days of early Christmas, we South Enders would hang our stockings by the chimney with great care. Mostly so they wouldn’t catch fire…I mean, we used that chimney for heat.  How Santa was going to get down the brick chute without scorching those red pajamas of his, us young’uns didn’t have a clue.  So we worried about St. Nick.  Well, mostly we worried he wouldn’t leave us anything at all while he was hustled off to the nearest burn unit.   Our parents told us not to lose any sleep over it – Santa probably had fire retardant uniforms.  Oh, right, like Kris Kringle moonlighted as a chemist half the year.       

    But Santa always did seem to find the South End on Christmas …  which didn’t help to explain the half empty stockings and the paucity of presents under the tree every year at our house.  We kids just figured Santa had checked his stupid list, probably twice, and we were blacklisted on the NAUGHTY side once again.  We even used to leave cookie bribes and a jug of something savory to drink when he showed up.  It was odd how the jug was always empty and still, the stockings were sadly deficient.  Pa always said the reindeer must’ve been thirsty and we’d say, hey, if Donder and Blitzen could find their way here and down a burning chimney with a 6 inch hole to the woodstove, how come St. Nick couldn’t find us?  And Ma would give Pa a dirty look and say, something was Blitzen all right, but it wasn’t the reindeer….

     Santa finds the South End pretty easily now, I’m telling you.  Come Christmas morning it looks like a China R Us down the middle of the living room, barely room to squeeze near the tree.  Nowadays we don’t leave Santa a plate of cookies.  He expects an ATM machine and a Visa Card.  Christmas down on the South End lasts and lasts – about 12 easy payments, then it starts all over ….

Neighbor, do you wake up mornings, look out your window over a cup of your favorite roasted coffee and discover the suburb you left behind two short years ago has followed you here to Paradise? Does it seem like four of your next door neighbors are saluting you with their Starbuck’s coffee? At night does it look like the sky is glowing an eerie electronic blue from 17 TV’s flickering out every living room window? During the day does it seem like every retiree from here to Elger Bay is mowing his weed and feed lawn on a precision close-order drill of riding John Deeres? Do you find yourself daydreaming of a place in the country where you’re the only lucky fella in the subdivision? Friend, stop thinking the grass is gonna be greener somewhere else… You know the chemical fertilizers aren’t any more effective there.

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