The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I got a friend who called me up asking if I had some colored glass he could get his hands on. Sure, I said, whatcha need it for? He explained that he was making mermaid sculptures and decorating them with everything from crushed seashells off the beach of Baby Island to possibly pennies as mermaid scales. He needed some glass to break into pieces and glue onto the mermaid’s tail. Okay, I said, I got some scrap glass you can use, anything to help a fellow glass breaker.

My pal is a real estate agent. Meaning, he’s in the same boat as a lot of us here on the lackadaisical South End, folks who basically are self-employed, work when we want, play most of the time. If we can handle the guilt of not embracing the Protestant Ethic, we’re fairly happy campers. But now, with this Pandemic Panic, the entire island has self-quarantined. Every manjack of us is holed up in Paradise wondering what the world will look like after the plague subsides. Whatever jobs were out there, they may not be after the dust settles and the virus leaves stunned survivors in its wake.

Whatcha making the mermaids for, anyway? I asked my buddy, thinking he was embarked on a mercy mission, maybe take a few to the nursing homes in the area since he’s a pretty philanthropic guy, the kind who takes firewood to shut-ins in the winter or organizes trash pickups alongside the roads. What do you mean? he asked. I mean what’s your plan with these mermaids is what I mean. No reason, he said, just bored.

So you got four mermaids done, now you’re making more? I was thinking about the 5 guitars I’d just made, no good reason. “You need to be careful, Zorba,” I warned. Whaddaya mean? he asked, a slight tremor in his voice. “Can’t you see, man, the thing has got a hold of you. One or two mermaids, sure, I get it. A little hobby to fill the time while the plague passes by. But the third? And a fourth? You can see where this is going. Be careful is all I’m saying.”

“It’s harmless,” he protested. “Just something to keep me from being bored. What’s wrong with that, Skeeter?

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “You’re playing with a loaded gun, my friend. Another mermaid you’ll be hooked. Sure, it’s a few seashells glued on, then it’s some broken glass, some pennies to make scales, next thing you’ll be making full size sculptures, casting bronze, there’s no telling where it leads. You’ll end up like the rest of us on this desolate hellhole of an island.”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?” he fairly squeaked. I hated being the bearer of bad news but hellfire, someone has to speak Truth to the moths circling the flame. “What I’m talking about is falling into the trap. One mermaid okay, two, sure, but the addiction starts there and next thing you know ….” I paused to let this sink into his bald skull. “What?” he asked, “Next thing I know what??”

“You become like the rest of us, Zorba, you become an artist.”

“I’m just killing some time, Skeeter, I’m just bored,” he protested.

“That’s what we all said. If we were honest. Just … be … careful, that’s all I’m saying. We got too many lost souls here now, we don’t need some retired realtor joining the ranks.”

Next day when I took him the glass he said he wanted more colors, not just the blues he originally requested. I shook my head, sure, why not. Too late, I could tell, nothing for it but to take him the whole crayon box. Sometimes you just can’t talk folks off the ledge.

Liberate the fish! The cry went up from far and wide, here to Michigan. The fishermen are up in arms! Well, the fishermen are up in reels. Damn the pandemic, they want to fish. They bought an expensive boat, they’ve got gas going bad, they have gear and motors and licenses, by god, they want to fish. Somewhere in the Constitution there’s an amendment they have the right to catch fish. Somewhere next to the one that gives them the right to have gun shops open. When fishing is outlawed, only outlaws will fish. Or fish will be outlaws. Something like that….

I confess here and now, I have fished all my life. My sailboat has a downrigger on it for salmon fishing. You know, when there were salmon. I have licenses to dig clams and catch crab. And I can see their point. We don’t have clambakes with one hundred other clammers and we don’t tether our boats together to fish. It’s a lonely occupation, fishing. At least it was for me. Nobody in the boat with me, pretty much no fish either. But it was like the old joke where a guy comes across a fisherman casting from the pier and asks, How’s the fishing? And the fisherman sez Great. How many you caught? the guy asks the fisherman. None, the fisherman sez, but the fishing is great.

The parks are closed, the boat ramps are closed off, the quarantine is in effect. We’re supposed to stay home. It’s no surprise to me that the first signs of insurrection, the first hint of revolution, aren’t the poor, the unemployed, the homeless … no, the protests started with the sports fishermen. They fight with the tribes, they fight with the government, they’d fight with anybody who took away their god-given right to fish the lakes and the streams and the Puget Sound. Where else can they go to get away from their wives, to drink beer in peace all day long, to breathe free the backwash of gas motors?

Personally, I hope the government, when they begin opening up the closures for schools and businesses, parks and trails, bars and restaurants in staged progressions, they let these fisherman fish first. For no better reason than to shut them up.

Coming home the other day, I was listening to National Public Radio — mostly for further education credits — and they were talking about somebody working in the Inner City who went around to the homeless to offer them free health checkups. These folks were, as our reporter tactfully put it, probably on drugs or booze or were mentally ill or any combination thereof. Probably all three.

We always talk about the street folks this way. Poor sad souls who fell through the societal cracks, who might have, if not for drugs or booze or rock and roll or psychiatric reasons, might have been happy productive members of society. Almost exactly the prognosis for me and my neighbors here on the South End!! I mean, who wouldn’t want to work at Twin City Foods on the ‘line’, who wouldn’t rather drive to McDonalds and flip burgers for minimum wage, no benefits, no health insurance, no kidding???? Who wouldn’t want to go back to school, get that GED or a PhD. and become a 6 figure a year attorney?? You’d have to be CRAZY not to!!!!!!!!!! You’d maybe have gotten so dependent on drugs and alcohol this wouldn’t APPEAL to you! whatsoever, not at all!?

Holy Cowpie. Maybe our reporter never worked in a factory dawn to dark, 6 days a week. Maybe our Good Samaritan never thought of the American Dream as a rat race through the labyrinth of Hell in search of moldy cheese. Maybe our sociologists, who work for the universities, have full tenure and pensions and fat salaries, maybe they see unemployment or poor health care or an Insecure Future, as something, oh, I don’t know, something WORSE than a dead end job, a horrible boss, a joy-draining life on the assembly line of ‘respectability’.

Well, now that Covid-19 has made indigents of all of us, the sociologists can study the effects of joblessness, poverty, homelessness and a scarcity of toilet paper on the folks who did think a mind-numbing job would spare them the grim realities. But I doubt the results will make these investigators re-evaluate their premises. They still have jobs. They still have health insurance. They can still pay their rent. I say send those researchers, those professors, those academicians down here! Give me a couple of days, that’s all. After that, they’ll be on drugs or booze or sudden retirement. Probably all three…. And all the happier for it. Not that we need more newcomers here on the South End….

There are those who think Donald J. Trump has no sense of humor, who argue that his narcissism makes it impossible for him to laugh at himself and therefore he is incapable of finding humor in others without resorting to cruelty and bullying. The world, they say, is a dichotomy of Him vs. the Rest of Us. He sees it through the lens of his bathroom mirror and to make jest of anything would be to mock himself.

I disagree. I think the guy is the consummate funny man. His problem, I’ll argue, is he’s a straight man in search of a partner. He’s Abbot without Costello, Laurel without his Hardy. Edgar Bergan without Charlie McCarthy. He has these great pearls of comedy but never gets the shell opened. Take yesterday, just for example. He’s at his usual podium giving the State of the Pandemic rundown for the past 24 hours. He’s blasted blue states for their Democratic leanings and insinuated that this is the reason for elevated Covid-19 deaths. Okay, in and of itself, NOT funny. Actually kind of dumb, stupid even. He’s got Pence nearby, pretty obviously a ventriloquist dummy, ready for a second act entrance, but like the Big Man himself, an empty suit without Edgar Bergen moving his wooden lips. The health folks might fill the role, crack wise after such a pronouncement, “Right, Don, probably explains their weather this past winter too.” Drum roll please….

Trust me, the reporters would bust a gut. We all would. Course Fauci would disappear from the stage, but that’s not to say the gag didn’t work. And ratings would soar, viewership would go through the roof and in a few short weeks the Trump Comedy Hour could expand to three hours or even four. We’re all trapped in our quarantine cocoon, you think folks wouldn’t watch a genuinely funny variety show?? Get another Fauci every day, just part of the act, same as the other government agencies, a hilarious revolving door. Part of the joke is how completely inappropriate the pick is. Rush Limbaugh as head of the Center for Disease Control. The guy was an oxycontin addict before we’d even heard the term opioid epidemic. Rush might hang on for a week before You’re Fired.

How about the one liner that folks should take disinfectants, get them inside the body by injection or ‘almost a cleaning’ where it will do a number, a tremendous number, on the lungs? Sure, it sounds stupid when you leave it out there like that. Makes the man look like Pence, nobody to drop the tag line. You almost feel, I don’t know, sorry for him. Where’s the damn punch line, everybody? Don’t just stand there looking uncomfortable! Drop the dime!!

“Well, I guess, Mr. President, you might consider, in your own case, doubling down. A little Lysol with a toilet bowl cleaner for a chaser!” Admittedly the poor schmuck who followed through would be gone immediately, but hey, anything for a laugh, right? Right?