The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Every year the editorial staff of the Crab Cracker comes to me and asks why don’t we run a South End Man and Woman of the Year? Mary Jo Permkowski begs them to run that contest so she can win South End Businesswoman of the Year for her Pedicure Salon, Mo-Toe Mojo. She figures she’s practically the only business left on the South End, a virtual shoe-in, she thinks, assuming South End Greenworks, Two Toke Tom’s semi-legal cannabis dispensary isn’t considered a legitimate candidate. Mary Jo’s kidding herself — Two Toke probably would win Man AND Business of the Year both.

I tell them let Stanwoodopolis run their little contest. High School’s over down here. We don’t elect Prom King and Queen — none of us were the captain of the football team or the most sexually active cheerleader. We know how the Game is rigged. And not just Yokel of the Year —- I mean the Big Game. Why do you think we live down here? To win popularity contests? Or to escape em …?

Oh, I suppose we could run our own easy enough. Best Moonshiner. Best Gyppo. Best Nettle Farmer. Best Hydroponic Cannabis Cultivator. Best Trailer Court. Best Old Hippie. Best Dandelion Show Garden. Best Poacher. Best Meth Lab. Best Rehabbed Felon. Best E-Bay saleswoman. Best Illegal Crabber. Best Friend of Colton Harris Moore. Best Glass Artist Who Plays Banjo and Writes Articles for the Crab Cracker.

But NO! we’re not gonna stoop to that. If all we wanted were a pack of sycophantic friends to vote us their favorite yokel or their best underground business, we’d sign up for Facebook and get all our neighbors to “Like” us. Probably mostly end up with hits from the FBI or the IRS anyway. No sir, let the popularity voting go on without us another year. We may not be the cutest or the most athletic or the smartest or the friendliest, we may not have a South End Fan Club or 2 zillion connections on Linked-In, we may not get invited to those catered North End soirees for the rich and famous winners of last year’s People of the Year, but we’ll just struggle on. And Betty Jo — you didn’t have an atheist’s prayer against Two Toke anyway, I don’t care how promiscuous you are.

Big Walter had a black plague mask with white words printed on it that said This Mask Is As Worthless As My Government. He had it pulled down so it only covered his mouth and not his nose, his idea of a personal protest. He and the Trump Boosters were sitting in the corner of the South End Marina’s Pilot Lounge, lately Revolution Central for the hotheads who come to congregate after a hard day of driving their 4×4’s up and down the island with their political signs and their semi-automatics in full view, no doubt a reminder to the rest of us commies that the day was coming when they would exercise their 2nd amendment rights if we won the election.

Little Jimmy was wondering loudly if maybe they should go down Tuesday and guard the polling station against ‘outside agitators’. Fairlane Fred was on his 3rd White Russian, an irony that apparently escaped his attention when he opined that the ‘Russkies’ were definitely trying to put their ‘finger on the scale’ for Biden and it might be time for an ‘intervention’ down at the polls. He’d heard on social media they would be there in force to coerce the voters.

“Hell yes they’ll try to intimidate the sheep!” Big Walter shouted as he tore off his mask, casting a wary eye toward Leonard, the new weekend bartender who only shook his head slightly and turned to a customer down the bar. That customer would be me. Two Toke sat an extra stool away, social distance in this Year of the Plague. “We’ll take some personnel down there and make sure things are on the up and up,” Walt declared.

“I’m in, Walt, count me in!” Little Jimmy declared resolutely. Fred and Jerry volunteered too. Two Toke chuckled. “Looks like we got ourselves an army in search of a war.”

Walter scowled and said if Two Toke Tom wanted a war, he’d gladly give him one. “My point exactly, Walter,” TT said and laughed.

Little Jimmy wanted to know what time they should show up and Fred said when the damn polling station opens up and Jerry asked where was the damn polling station anyway. This cracked Two Toke up. “Leonard,” he said, “give these vigilantes directions to the war, they’re short a GPS.” Leonard, despite being new to the job, stayed diplomatically out of this, just kept drying beer pints with a towel and putting them on the rack below the bar.

“That’s right, go ahead and laugh, Bernie Boy,” Walter growled, his mask on the table, definitely worthless now. “But when America turns socialist, you won’t be smiling anymore and that, my leftist friend, is a fact.”

“Walt, you wouldn’t know a fact if it ran you over with your own truck. But hey, I’m totally okay with you boys patrolling the polling station. Really, I am,” Tom said amiably. “ More power to you, more power to the people. I’d even go with you. You know, if I had a gun, but being a peacenik and all, I don’t. “

“Sure you would, Tom, sure you would,” Big Walter said, shaking his head sadly.

“I would, Walt, sure as you believe in facts, I would. Tell me what time to show up, maybe I’ll join the militia.”

“Leonard,” I said, “give these patriots a round on me. And Thomas here too. I think we’ve found some unity at last in these divided times.” And so, a few days before the election, we all drank a good will toast to an honest vote, long live the queen. Two Toke and I left together and neither of us told the boys our state was strictly mail-in ballots, no more polling stations to guard.

The other day I was clearing brush down by the road when I heard horns honking and engines revving, a cacophony audible from half a mile away. I put down my sickle and waited to see what parade was going to pass by me on its way to the head of the island. Half a minute later a convoy of trucks proceeded past me at half the speed limit, TRUMP 2020 signs propped up in the pickup beds, American flags half tattered from the wind shear snapping in the wind, horns blaring, lights on emergency blinkers. At the head of the line was Big Walter dressed in military camo, MAGA hat worn proudly, arm out the rolled down window, an assault rifle in the gunrack behind him. When he saw me standing by the side of the road, he gave me a big thumbs up and yelled, ‘Resistance is futile, Skeeter!!’

Rather than yell something obscene back over the road roar, I just stood at attention and gave him a salute. Okay, one finger only. Big Walter thinks he’s the Commandant of the South End Militia these days, the patriot who’ll guard the county’s ballot drop box against possible tampering, the guerilla warrior who’ll take on the Antifa when they turn up after Trump’s victory to protest what they’ll claim is a bogus election, the gunslinging take-no-prisoners vigilante who’ll guarantee liberty for the white males of the country who he claims are under siege and discriminated against.

Behind his lead vehicle came a ragtag assortment of Walter’s militia. Fat Phil and Little Jimmy rode together in a Ford 250 jacked higher than the gigantic tires looking like an escapee from a monster truck show. Behind them came a couple of half tons, one dump truck, a WW Two jeep, two flatbeds, three or four vintage cars and trucks and oddly, taking up the rear, Two Toke with his battered Volkswagen van circa 1966, peace signs plastered all over it and a Grateful Dead insignia hand painted on the front . Behind him were the half dozen poor folks who were stuck in the traffic jam, probably embarrassed to be part of the parade. Or maybe not.

Two Toke grinned happily, shot me the peace sign and I just shook my head as he rolled past in that micro bus like an acid flashback to the Viet Nam protests of our political youth. Here we are again, I thought, back where we started, nothing much changed. I picked up my sickle and went back to slashing sticker bushes and blackberries. By spring they’d be grown back and I’d be at it again.

One week to go until the referendum on our current Leader. Post-covid, he’s on the campaign trail asking his troops to come out and guard the polling stations, cautioning that the mail-in ballots will be fraudulent, declaring that no votes should be counted after midnight on the day of the election despite many states having laws that declare ballots will be counted later if they meet the postmark. The winds of change are in the air, fragrant as a smoldering leaf mulch fire.

I talked to my neighbor whose mother died last night in Wausau, Wisconsin. The covid spike there in that fair city is 50% of those tested are covid positive. The outbreak started, oddly enough, when the President came there and his troops, all drunk on the Kool-aid belief of the virus as a left wing media hoax, stood shoulder to shoulder in Trumpstep solidarity. The GOP legislators who are running close elections are turning up these days with masks on, stepping a political distance away from the SuperSpreader himself, a sure sign that his coat tails aren’t going to help but instead pull them down too.

Polls are predicting a possible massacre. To which the Republicans counter that the polls were wrong last time. They weren’t wrong the last mid-term and they won’t be wrong this next time either. Key states lined up for Mr. T by 77,000 votes and the electoral college fell his way. You want to bet they’ll fall that way this time, call my bookie, I’m happy to give you odds. 538, the Nate Silver polling algorithm, gives the odds at 88% that Biden will beat this guy like a recalcitrant mule. 538 puts the bet on the Senate at 74% the Democrats will take over.

I’m ordinarily not one who thinks the government should be completely in the hands of one party. But after the last four years of incompetence, lies, racism, xenophobia, narcissism, corruption and impeachable behavior glossed over by his sycophantic minions, well, I’m ready for some adults to run the show for awhile and hopefully not get too power crazed.

The writing’s on the White House wall. The country knows this Covid response was a stupid senseless mess and they will vote accordingly. Trump himself sees what’s coming. Check and mate. Time, he figures, to tip over the checkerboard. If he’s ahead at midnight Nov. 3rd, well sir, that’s a victory. The rest he’ll fight out in the Supreme Court. And you wondered why the Barrett woman was rammed through in record time ….

If you’re like me, and God help you if you are, you’re having trouble keeping track of what day of the week it is. Even worse, what month. Time sometimes stands still, sometimes races ahead, and worse, occasionally slips backwards. This is the sixth or seventh month of the Covid panic, outbreaks on the rise once again here and worldwide. You probably track the statistics the way you track the election polls, feverishly and incessantly. You pray to your gods that this epidemic will wane, that the election will be over, that a vaccine will be discovered that will give immunity to both.

I make one trip a week to the grocery store to stock up on food and reality suppressors. Every couple weeks I fill up the truck’s gas tank. In a real emergency I’ll have to haul into a hardware store to buy a replacement toilet for the one that broke recently, no doubt overworked by stressful bowel syndrome brought on by too much internet news. Other than that we’re sequestered here on the partisan South End, caged animals walking the trails of our self-imposed prison, wondering when Normality will return. Lately we think never.

Rumors trickle into our little bubble. A naked dead man washed up on shore a few miles north of us. Antifa? A Covid victim? Another suicide by someone who opted out of quarantine? Wildfires are burning up across the freeway. Or was it in Colorado? Fires seem to be engulfing half the west. Some say global warming, some say leftist guerillas. All information coming in is suspect now. Iranian disinformation and Chinese hackers, one of our neighbors claimed. Personally, I think he’s a Russian plant. His lights stay on late into the night. What’s he up to that late at night? Course, maybe he thinks the same thing of me. But we know, don’t we?, that I can’t even speak Russian much less work for the KGB since I am workaphobic.

The election is supposed to happen in a week. Only the gullible think this will occur. Sure, votes will be cast, media will report delays, ballots will be rejected, speculation of tampering will be rampant. The election will pass, maybe no winner declared, martial law declared, plague masks declared illegal to wear, schools reopened or closed or reopened again. A new election will be called, the last election voided, the President will speak on Fox News to say we’ve turned the corner, to declare victory over Covid, to promise a vaccine before the next election if there ever is one.

We have, he will say, nothing to fear but fear itself. He will declare that he is the first to say this. He insists that he’s the first to say this, that he said it long ago but the fake news won’t cover brilliant quotes of his. He will tell you what you have to be afraid of. Plenty, he’ll say. Suburban takeovers, racist riots, plague riddled immigrants, our own FBI, the Chinese, the liberals, even his own Republicans. Trust him, he’ll say, he’s got this. He’s got the best team. He’s got a Plan and when we’re ready, he’ll show it to us. We’re not ready yet. Maybe in a few more months.

But … what month is it now?