The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Back in the days when we wrenched on our cars — NOT for the love of vintage automobiles, but because we were too poor to have someone else repair them — we had just come back from the Rez junkyard where we’d pulled an automatic tranny out of another ’64 Impala half sunk in the swamps. Muddy nasty work, but you do what has to be done…. By late afternoon we had that transmission cleaned off and bolted onto our own Chevy up by the barn, and now the moment of truth had arrived so we fired up the Impala, ignored the bucket of parts with the ‘extra’ bolts and nuts and do-hickeys, dropped it off its jacks and headed up the road.

For the first mile we drove slow, feeling for sloppy shifts, listening for odd noises. Two miles up we hit 50 mph and now terrible noises rose through the floorboards so we pulled over and crawled underneath. Sure enough, a few bolts were missing where the tranny connected to the bellhousing, no doubt those ‘extra’ parts back in the bucket by the barn. We cursed, we spit, we finally laughed at our stupidity, stuck our thumbs out and waited for a ride.

Joe Frittitelli swerved to the shoulder in his big Exxon Valdez of a cruiser, said hop in, boyz, and we squeezed between Joe and his girlfriend, all four of us in the front seat the spaciousness of a Montana wheatfield. A mile later Joe had to urinate ‘like a racehorse’ and since the driver’s door was no longer functional, all of us slid out the passenger side and waited while Seabiscuit relieved himself, then we all rolled back in across seas of amber grain. He dropped us on the roadside by our place, then sped off in a purple haze of half burnt oil.

We retrieved the lost bolts, hitched back to the crippled Impala, installed them and an hour later we were back at the shack, Jack, celebrating with some cold ones. A month later I’m working my job as weekend graveyard orderly down at the Everett Pain Motel and run into Joe at 3 AM wandering the desolate hallways. “What’s up, Joe?” I asked.

Joe, it seems, had been cleaning his gun late that night, pulled the trigger and lo and behold, the unanticipated bullet in the chamber was now embedded in his girlfriend’s brain. I had just taken her to the Cat Scan but hadn’t recognized her. She was comatose but alive. It was, needless to say, a long night. The police were convinced he’d shot her intentionally. I was convinced he hadn’t. If he had, he deserved an Academy Award.

She stayed up in ICU on life support for two months. Alive, I guess, but not really. Last we heard they moved her to a facility that cared for the comatose. Joe was never charged. He got cancer and moved away, where, we heard, he died. And …. not to sound too cold hearted or unsympathetic to the victims here, our Impala died too. The tranny was no good and we didn’t want to waste time or money on another bad one. I don’t think we wanted to meet any more neighbors either. Maybe it wasn’t so much we were dirt poor back then — as much as life seemed just way too cheap.

Here’s a fun statistic you might like to share on your twitter account, Facebook page or just save for around the Thanksgiving dinner table with the family. Over half of Trump supporters believe the Qanon claim that the Democrats are running a pedophilia ring. You read every day where some pervert is arrested and his computer confiscated when it’s discovered he’s downloading child porn. What you didn’t know is that kiddie porn probably came from the Democratic Party, videos no doubt made with all the children they’ve kidnapped and locked into pizza parlor basements around the country. Insidious? Holy Uncle Joe, Batman, I’ll say insidious.!! And you were worried about the Biden Mafioso Crime Family….

Mr. T himself says he knows nothing, NOTHING, about Qanon, nothing, NOTHING, about pedophile rings run by Sleepy Joe. Sure, he retweets this stuff but only for amusement of the masses, they can decide on their veracity themselves. The fact that it comes directly from the President of the United States surely wouldn’t influence their ability to differentiate fact from insane fantasy. Not one little bit.

This is what 4 years of an emperor with no clothes can bring, an electorate spoonfed bullshit that thinks the Democratic Party can get away with corralling kids and forcing them to do god only knows what unthinkable acts. Welcome to Trump’s America. A dark hole of a place where perversion lurks behind every schoolyard and nursery. A place where a cabal of political operatives steal the nation’s children and enslave them for their evil purposes. A milk industry that hides the missing children from the public, no doubt co-criminals with the Democrats. This is what America has become.

Course, to be fair, we might ask the question why, if Trump and his followers know about this, why on earth do they allow it to go on?? Where is that evil fighter Bill Barr when we really need him? Where are the Republican Senators who allow this to continue unabated in their own states? Where are the people of Good?

I don’t know the answer to any of this. I surely do not. But I know this: I’m really glad I’m not a kid.

South End society runs the gamut these days from Dot.com millionaires to meth-heads. You live down here in the tonier backwashes, you acquire a necessary degree of egalitarianism. That, or you move into the Gated Communities, rig up elaborate security systems and hope the unwashed masses don’t mistake the moat around your castle as a fancy hot tub.

One of our neighbors who went by the moniker of ‘Dawg’ married a woman south of me and immediately added 4 stepkids to his care. His ex was living over the mountains with two of his other kids and so, in the spirit of misguided parenthood, Dawg and his old lady hired an attorney to regain custody of those poor deprived children being raised by a single mom who’d taken up with an ex-con and worse, one on drugs. Dawg and his mizzus were also on drugs, drank heavily, but they had decided their parental skills would serve the children best.

And so they finally convinced a judge and child services to return the two teenagers to the stability and warmth of a South End home, to be raised by paragons of virtue and join the family circle. A year later Dawg and the mizzus split the sheets after she’d shacked up with an alcoholic loser on the north end and left him with 4 juvenile delinquent stepkids and his own 2 genetic ones. In the spirit of sacrifice and after considerable deliberation with myself and Jack Daniels, Dawg moved out too.

Lest you think Dawg was heartless, it should be stated he came down once a week to fill the fridge and ‘check on things’. “I just can’t be here all the damn time,” he told me. “And anyway, those kids of hers (meaning the mizzus’) hate my guts.”

The neighbors grew concerned when the parties lasted deep into the night, cars honked horns and tore out at 2 AM and numerous fights were continually breaking out. Chickens, dogs, cats, meth dealers and other animals came and went in the house whose doors were wide open day and night. The floors were urine and feces stained and the place reeked like a Texas porta-potty in August. Dawg told me his daughter — the one he’d ‘rescued’ from an abusive life — was now pregnant. She was 15, maybe 16. When she came, she was a bright and inquisitive kid. Now she could look forward to teenage motherhood.

There’s plenty of guilt to go around and I have some myself for not going to the police or child protection services or even calling some church. My mother used to tell us kids, “It takes all kinds to make a world.” And when we got to be smartass teenagers, we’d reply, “Right, Mom, that’s why it’s all screwed up.”

Dawg got fired awhile back from his job of 25 years. He ended up marrying his ex, the very same woman whose kids he took and ruined. It only lasted a year or so, then she hooked up with a biker from Seattle. I ran into him the other day. Same old Dawg. Like he always said when he lived down here: No brains, no headaches. Dawg hasn’t got either.

Three weeks to go, Lord, three long weeks until the incessant ads stop, the mudslinging ends, the election signs come down and we all resume our regular broadcasting. With any luck we’ll put the Trump Show into reruns and wait for the Fox News winter line-up featuring the evening variety program Dancing with Donald. Whatever the outcome of this interminable election, the man won’t be going away, not for a long long time. He’s basically a herpes virus, lurking in your spinal column, just waiting for the right opportunity. Cue the music: ‘you’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.’ Actually, the song IS about him.

Me, I’m ready for a break from Mr. T. Four years has worn me down. If Covid takes away taste and smell, Mighty Mouth has destroyed my sense of humor. My funny bone has atrophied and I may have forgotten how to laugh, permanently if this guy gets another term of office. In the middle of a pandemic, with protests going on for months and riots breaking out continually, with kids locked up at home with parents who can’t afford child care, with the economy in smoking ruins for the poor, maybe it’s time for someone who wants to unite the country in common cause, not poke a stick in half the nation’s eyes. A little optimism instead of incessant pessimism might be a welcome relief. I know I’m sick and tired of the constant vitriol, the finger pointing, the shaming and the blaming. How about a plan of action? How about tackling some problems? How about helping those who need help? How about confronting this Covid outbreak with something more substantial than rah rah, hurray for me, what a job I’ve done, look at how I saved probably 2 million lives? Send this Cat 5 hurricane back to Mar a Lago where they know how to handle disasters. Board up, hunker down and hope the damage is manageable when the storm subsides. Then go to work rebuilding what was torn down.

Maybe you watched the ‘town meeting’ last week, the one he arranged with NBC after refusing to debate Biden virtually after he’d contracted Covid. If so, you got the full monty, the angry guy, the leader who retweets conspiracies theories and then denies knowing anything about them, just sending them out to his twitter followers and they can decide for themselves. The moderator said, c’mon, Mr. T, you’re the President, not somebody’s crazy uncle. How wrong she was. He’s everyone’s crazy uncle.

I was talking with my neighbor today. He drives milk truck. Home delivery. Glass bottles. Old school. It’s like having a time warp drifting around in the back yard. I’m expecting the Iceman soon on the other side of me. Big tongs dropping blocks in my 1910 icebox that sits on the porch for decoration now, you know, the present, before the century turned back. Why not? Might be time to save on the electric bill running that old Frigidaire we got back in the future.

The milkman was telling me how he’d gone to Minnesota to go ice fishing. 20 below zero. Couple feet of snow. Half a mile out on some lake near the Arctic Circle above Minneapolis. Heaven on earth. I asked what YOU would: why? He’s a dedicated fisherman and he just wanted to experience it, he said. Part of his Bucket List. I was afraid to ask what else was on that list.

I went ice fishing once. 1966. Northern Wisconsin. 10 below. Nice wind freshening up the crusty snow. My brother and I trekked out like deranged Zhivagos across a frozen desolate God-abandoned expanse, lugging an ice auger, some ice fishing ‘jigs’ and a little bait. We drilled a 2 foot hole through the ice, slapping ourselves to keep warm, then set the jigs to pop up when some sluggish fish floated by in a state of half-hibernation and got a sudden appetite. We stood there, two primitive people hunting food. The wind swept snow around our feet and the water in our fishing hole began to close up with slush. We didn’t talk much. The jig didn’t move. Time itself was freezing up.

I looked at my brother. He looked miserable. He looked at me. I know what I looked like. Without a word, we pulled our lines up, packed up the jigs not very carefully, grabbed the auger, our pride, our fishing fantasies and trudged back to shore, half frozen. Let’s just say — Ice Fishing would never have to be on our Bucket List later in life.

I asked my milkman how HE liked it. “Just wanted to experience it,” he said. “And Minnesota too, in the winter. I’ve heard about it. “ “You catch anything?” I asked. “Naw, just a small walleye. Twice, I think, same fish.” “Probably the one we didn’t catch,” I mumbled.

The rest of you anglers, give that poor walleye time to grow before you trek across the tundras in search of Antarctic fish trophies. They grow slow under the ice.