The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

You know your day is going to go downhill when the first words you hear are “I have some bad news.” You worry just HOW bad that news will be, illness in the family, disaster down the road, any number of fears jumping out of the closet you try to keep them in. So when it turns out to be the washing machine, you think, well, nobody’s hurt. How bad can a busted washer be?

I have dealt with busted washers in my brief time as a Maytag repairman. And I can attest that, no, lives were not lost, but … in some cases I wish mine was after a day or two disassembling machines that were obviously not meant to be repaired by do-it-yourselfers, simple things, but encased behind everything else. The repair bill for something like a catch filter, usually easily accessed, but in our washer requiring door removal and major disassembly, would be astronomical. And probably justified.

Today, though, the door hinge broke. I smiled inwardly, happy in the knowledge that I would not be required to do a washer colonoscopy to repair this thing. On the other hand I’m no longer naïve enough to think any plumbing repair will be a piece of cake, those days are long gone. The plumbing gods, inscrutable and malevolent, exact terrible tolls for those who think they can travel their pipes with impunity. The real question is how high the price? How great the pain? How tentative your sanity?

The door came off without much ado. The hinge was hidden beneath two sections, inner and outer door, but fine, just locate the odd tools that fit the screw heads, a trick the manufacturer plays to frustrate us do-it-ourselfers. I got it out, didn’t even lose some of the screws that fell under the machine, to discover the pins that the hinge rotated on had both broken, top and bottom, no doubt high quality pig iron, something Whirlpool must have saved a nickel or 6 cents using inferior metal. My hope that I could repair or substitute the pins was a pipedream. The entire unit was one piece and I wisely decided not to try to glue the pins back to the hinge, no dummy me. I went online instead.

Where, after some searching for model numbers, I located my part. Whirlpool no longer makes that part, or so my first search stated confidently, probably the worst news I could get. For want of a cheap-ass hinge, the war was lost and a new washer would be required? Really? I went on Ebay looking for a used hinge. No dice. I looked for an entire door assembly. No luck. Finally I went back to looking for the part online and after some time found one. $117. Roll that number back and forth on your tongue, then consider the machine, new, cost about $600. That’s 20% of the cost of a new Whirlpool front load washer. In what universe does this make any sense whatsoever? I will tell you what universe, the one that exalts capitalism, the one that claims competition drives prices down, the one that believes in the fine print that obsolescence is necessary for a vibrant economy, the one that outsourced washing machines to China, that one.

My part is now on order. I reassembled the old door. Backwards of course the first time, the third time was a charm. Good practice for when the part arrives in a week. If I’d wanted it next day, only 40 dollars more. Ten to get it in a week. You know, and I do too, when that part comes, 50-50 it will be the wrong part. This is not pessimism, this is plumbing.

Now, a lot of us South Enders look a little dubiously at Dad’s Day. It sounds suspiciously like one of those STING operations for deadbeat dads delinquent on child support payments. Get us all down here, then throw the net. We can already see the headlines in the Conway Chronicler: South Enders nabbed in Paternity Sting.

NOT that I’m saying I’m a deadbeat dad. I know being an artist and a banjo picker sort of doesn’t help the image, but we all been down on our luck. Little Jimmy understands that. His mom’s a little less forgiving, but when the CD sales start rolling in and the big art commissions, she’ll change her tune.

What with all these studies proving that more than a quarter of men in this country aren’t the genetic fathers of their children, Fatherhood on the South End has taken on a whole new meaning in these modern times we live in. DNA tests take all the romance out of relationships, you ask me. The old family tree’s got some extra branches now. And I guess that’s good, but it sure takes some of the mystery away from sparking and courting. Personally I don’t care to find out half the South End String Band is related.

But it IS father’s day coming up. Won’t be long before dear old dad is just a Test Tube in some sterile lab. Sample # 74 Double X, blue eyes, dark hair, long fingers for the banjo. I like to think I got more to offer than a Petri dish. Although, Little Jimmy’s mom might not agree.

The Band was thinking of maybe lobbying for Father’s Day being a day of amnesty. You know: Give a Dad a Break Day. Or even a whole month. NOT that I’m saying the boys down here are looking for a way to skip the June payments. We were just thinking a little breathing room ….. you know, til the CD sales pick up.

I got a lot of friends who are O.C.D., obsessive compulsive disorder folks, what we on the South End call Anal. Harsh word, anal, so for our purposes here we’ll stick with OCD. Don’t want to offend anyone, but linguistics can be a two edged knife. My pals suffering from OCD are mostly engineers, but they don’t see their symptoms as suffering. Or a disorder even. In fact, they would argue that the orderliness they demand of themselves is quite possibly the panacea for the problems the rest of us have. Course, they don’t factor in the fact that the problem I have is mostly them.

But let’s be fair. The new psychiatric diagnostic description for myself is: S.L.O.B. Seriously Lacking Obsessive Behavior. Poor toilet training as a kid, I guess. I don’t have to wash my truck every damn week. I don’t wash it every year some years. I accept that the universe is falling apart, what we call entropy down here in the South End Scientific Community. It’s just how things work. They go to hell in a handbasket and if you want to spend your life pushing rocks up a hill like Sisyphus, be my guest. They’re going to make a nice rock wall for yahoos like me when they end up down my way at the bottom.

I don’t make my bed. I don’t clean my windows. I don’t dust my shelves. I don’t edge my lawn. I don’t stack my firewood in nice rows. I don’t organize my files. I don’t follow directions. I don’t even look at the damn directions. I don’t follow a recipe or write one down either. I mean, why? The next batch of bread or homebrew or the next meal will be different, maybe better, maybe worse. C’est la vie, amigo! Routine is the killer, lists are for someone closer to death, order is for the delusional, life is chaos and the sooner you accept it, the better off you’ll be. So yeah, I’m SLOB.

I’m sure there’s a pharmacological cure for my ailment. But hey, I’ve got a pharmacological cure for lots of my ailments, why add one that might have side-effects for the others? In the final analysis, I suppose there’s a nice equilibrium between me and my OCD cronies. They draw in the lines, I draw the rest. When it works, we got a great little homeostatic community. When it doesn’t, well … we’ll find out what happens when gravity hits anti-gravity. Probably sounds like my banjo…..

I just got my first blackmail letter. Maybe you get them infrequently, but I live a pretty scrupulous life, as you probably know. So when I found this in my inbox, believe me, I was shocked. Shaken to my core. Suddenly paranoid. Probably I should have gone directly to the police, but … with the protests and riots and vigilantes, I knew there was no time left for the gendarme to investigate a crime that didn’t directly involve violence. Although! The tone of the extortion letter certainly didn’t rule out suggested mayhem if I didn’t cough up some future request for money or …? Or what?

This is the email I received last night:
What’s going on, my man? My son reports that he saw this guy in a beat up old cowboy hat dressed in clothes that look like he slept in them and slowly realized that it was you, the stained glass wizard of the south end.
OK so far. But, I just could not believe my ears when he said that you were driving not your old beat up, cow pasture, red-neck pickup but, (and I can barely get the words out of my mouth) a brand new Prius?? Tell me it ain’t true? You haven’t gone over to the dark side more often associated with them high-brow folks who live north of the Mason Dixon line, more familiar to newcomers as Mountain View?? I mean, how you gonna carry your still around? And how is it gonna look when you and the South End String Banders show up in fancy new wheels. My god, man, your rep is surely gonna take a hit.

My blood stood still reading this. Believe me, I wanted to change my email address, disconnect my land line or even move to another county. I’ve watched enough cheesy TV cop shows to know that blackmailers never stop. Once they have their claws in you, the demands escalate faster than riots after pepper sprayings. The next message would undoubtedly be for a small amount to keep quiet. The one after that, who knows? Acreage? Musical instruments? My unsold stained glass windows? All of the above eventually, I’m betting. Especially when my extorter learned the worth of my homemade instruments and stained glass panels and fell into an inchoate rage.

So I did what any red blooded American would do in these dire circumstances. I wrote him back with my own demands.

As my commander-in-chief would tell you, these are damnable LIES, faux news, some sick conspiracy and obviously a pathetic attempt to extort money from poor old Skeeter. Your son was no doubt drunk or drug addled or both, probably huffing hi octane directly from the pump and mistook some wretched geek for myself. Get your boy some help before it’s too late!! I can recommend any number of discreet dry-out houses if you need the ones that require references. We can let this sordid attempt at blackmail die quietly on the vine. As you well know, nobody would believe this story anyway. I do NOT wear a beat up old cowboy hat nor wear clothes that look slept in. Mine are what we call weathered. And my truck, albeit possibly riddled with two or three ‘bullet’ holes from flying lawnmower rocks, is certainly not a redneck pickup, rather a well traveled and vintage half ton with the proper patina. Exactly, patina!

But I will say, not so much in self defense as simple justification, the mizzus’ car gets twice the mileage of that vintage truck of mine. My new motto and possibly the epitaph for Skeeter’s headstone: 65 mpg. Your son asked if it was a bit sluggish on acceleration. Tell him what a Tesla does in full stomp mode. Hang onto yer hat!! Not that Skeeter would ever be seen driving a Tesla. No sir, not unless he took off the cowboy hat.

Needless to say, the tactic, so far anyway, has worked. Let this be a lesson to all future blackmailers.

About 7 hours ago I turned 70. Welcome to the new 60. Or the new 50. Or whatever. I think they mean years, not IQ, but I suspect it’s not years. It’s only been about an hour ago that I woke up to discover I was now a septegenarian. If I lived in a society that revered its elders, I would be a king. But as you probably know, we live in a society that finds older people mostly embarrassing. Actually, after mostly old white people elected Trump as president, I do too. So much for that adage that age begets wisdom.

I thought maybe this would be the year I was forced into retirement. When the pandemic hit, I figured for sure this was the year. But if 70 years have taught me anything, they proved time and time again don’t count yer chickens before they hatch, that cackling you hear may not be fowl. We had two colossal maples fall behind the house and so the year began with a major job of bucking, splitting, hauling and stacking firewood, 12 cord so far and plenty more to go. You think that’s retirement, you been watching daytime TV too long.

My day job, the stained glass stuff, well, that had pretty much dried up. I lost a couple projects the past few years in Utah and Alaska, made the finals but missed the championship ring. Those don’t come along very often anymore in these times of fiscal restraint. Alaska gutted its public art program, no more out-of-staters allowed now that the oil subsidies up there are dwindling to trickles. I had organized a local craft show that featured the best artist/craftspeople we could round up, held it two years but this year the plague canceled it. The glass and the guitars I’d made for it, hoping maybe to sell some of those instruments, well, they can just clutter up my studio another 12 months, probably longer. So hello retirement, I figured.

I offered the county a donation of a 21 foot long mural of glass for their new Administration Building, figuring I might as well keep working even if I have to work for free, maybe delay the Big R a few months.

But like I said, eggs aren’t chickens and so when I got notified I’d been picked for a glass commission by the WA Arts Commission, I put the rocker back in the corner, cast off my lap blanket and put away the drool bucket. Maybe it wouldn’t be the end of a glass career just yet. Next year probably. Yep, I can just about hear that chick pecking at the shell, almost breaking out.