The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

If you want to light a bonfire down at the South End Diner, bring up the subject of homelessness, no quicker way to warm up a cup of coffee without a microwave, trust me. Two mornings ago the boyz were slamming down chicken fried steaks, curly hashbrowns, four egg omelettes and something called ‘the works’, which, by god, really was. Everything from bacon to eggs to ham slices, cheese and vegetables, all slathered with white gravy. Add the toast buttered heavily and what you have is a heart attack waiting around the corner. ‘The Works’ is the favorite for my pals. Wash it down with four or five cups of java and between shovelfuls, the conversations are caloric.

Four Finger Fred was wiping gravy off his tobacco stained beard before he pushed back his chair contentedly and asked our little group of sociologists how many homeless people they knew down here on the South End. “Why you asking, Freddie?” Two Toke wanted to know, hoping maybe to head off what he knew was coming. “Because,’ Fred said, ‘the County is conducting a survey, that’s why. First they’ll run the numbers, then they’ll inflate em, next thing you know they’ll be busing drug addicts up from Seattle to our island, taxing us for free housing, probably build them a damn house.”

“There was a guy once who lived in his car south of Tyee Store,” Little Jimmy said. “Cops finally ran him off.” Fred shook his head, “He’s long gone now, Jimbo.” Two Toke set his fork down and pushed his plate back plenty agitated. “What’s it to you, Fred? Folks fall down on their luck, you what, you want to run em off the island?”

“I don’t care where they go, Tom, just so long as they go. All I’m saying is there isn’t a problem here, why go looking for an expensive solution?”

I said I had met a woman this summer who was watching the eagles’ nest with me down at the Head, nice lady standing on the bluff when I walked up. When I asked if she lived around here, she told me she didn’t live anywhere and when I asked the obvious follow-up question, she said she lived in her car, moved around place to place. Her husband had left her and taken up with her sister and when their mother died, her sister had stolen her inheritance and her husband kicked her out of their house.

“Oh right!” Fred howled. “What a story! Skeeter, you are the bleedingest bleeding heart in the world. I bet you let her stay in your yard. I bet you gave her money for a motel. God, what a sucker….”

A better man than me might have done that, I was thinking. Might have asked, at least, if she needed anything. Food, money, whatever. But mostly we just talked and I listened to her troubled stories. She had some ‘mental issues’, she said. She was working to get her share of the divorce, maybe her share of her mom’s will. Fred might’ve been right, it could have all been fiction. But … I’ve known some homeless folks down here, living in the woods, hitchhiking to town, working odd jobs for food and beer and cigarettes. Harmless folks, folks down on their luck, folks with mental issues. Fellow South Enders. That’s what I told Fred anyway, who sarcastically replied, “What am I supposed to do about it, Skeeter? Throw money at your loser friends, buy em a house, what?”

“I don’t know, Fred, but what I really want is for the rich to shut up. I want you to stop your whining, that’s all. We got it made, why begrudge the poor?” Fred, of course, just laughed. “Brenda,” he called to our waitress, “how about a refill for all of us. If they haven’t got enough for the coffee, it’s on me.” Brenda rolled her eyes before coming near us with her thermos. “Just add it to the tip, Big Spender,” she muttered. Fred, of course you know, doesn’t leave tips.

Politics

Unless I miss my guess, most of you out there in Blogland are dreading the coming New Year. You’ve had a dose of impeachment hearings, you’re sick to death of politics, you’re probably already making a New Year Resolution NOT to watch MSNBC or Fox News this next year. You’re like the moth that vows NEVER to fly toward the candle again.

But you will. The impeachment trial is coming, the 2020 elections will heat up, Rudy Giuliani will never go back to his coffin even in daylight. A dystopian grimness has spread dark wings across the land and the warring tribes huddle by campfires in their separate valleys of darkness. A minister from our island mega church up north walked into the Tyee Store a month ago wearing a red Make America Great Again cap and immediately found himself in a verbal joust with Charlie, a self-appointed gadfly for the store. I’ve known Charlie for 40 years, back when he was a bit more spry than the arthritic old codger he is today, but I couldn’t have told you his political leanings although I would have guessed he was a Trump man. Apparently he isn’t. What that makes him, I would hate to hazard a guess.

But he took umbrage to that hat and apparently he felt called upon to berate this new customer. Shyness was never one of Charlie’s personality traits. He’s opinionated, he’s aggressive, he’s a fixture down at the store. Like a lot of South Enders, maybe too many, he’s what we call a Character. For good or ill. The good chaplain, evidently unfamiliar with our ways down here, declared he had the right to wear whatever he damn well pleased on his righteous head. Charlie begged to differ.

Well, one insult led to another and the argument spilled over the milk coolers, past the condiment shelves and onto the café tables. Charlie, I suspect, already thought America was great, or at least good enough. He didn’t need some outsider telling him it wasn’t. Finally the debate became so heated that the store personnel asked the reverend to either take the hat off his head or take his business elsewhere. Charlie, of course, offered to help him with that decision.

The man of the cloth, mightily pissed now, revealed that he was, indeed, a minister and that the store would sorely rue this day when his flock was informed of his mistreatment down here in the sin-socked South End and Gomorrah. Boycotts were hinted at not too subtly. Business would suffer from this iniquity. The wrath of Trump lovers would visit misfortune on our heads. So saith this man of the Lord.

Obviously he didn’t grasp that business was already suffering. That misfortune was something we were accustomed to. That voodoo quasi-religious threats were more comic than something to be taken seriously. That we would probably do just fine without the congregation thronging down to the Tyee Store for their cigarettes and beer. I don’t know if the coming year will make America great or if it will make America a poorer nation. But … I do know this: The South End doesn’t need anyone to tell it anything either way. So we’ll probably skip the resolutions and just muddle along in our little Shangri-La-La.

I been making lately, down at the Diner’s restroom, a sociological study of commode values. Oh, I know, you’re thinking my god, can’t we just leave well enough alone? But I’m an Observer of all things South End and I don’t intend to leave a stone unturned or a bathroom unscrutinized. What I been noticing is this: a lot of the boyz won’t touch a seat or a flush handle. They’d rather leave their offerings for the next occupant than risk some ugly herd of germs jumping onto their ungloved hand, apparently because they either won’t wash them or they don’t think there’s enough anti-bacterial power in the washroom hand soap.

I used to think South Enders were pretty salty fellows, tough as galvanized roofing nails, but apparently not. Maybe all this chatter about Bird Flu Pandemics has created a backlash response: CHICKENITIS. I think it’s got to stop, men. I think you got to step up to the plate — or the bowl — and put your Big Girl Panties on and just be as courageous as you can be. If the seat is in the Down position, for Pete’s sake, wrap your little hand in toilet paper and put it in the Up mode – don’t whiz through the hole and leave the next Sitter a splattered seat. It’s unworthy and it’s Piggish, not to mention Priggish. Jeez, fella, were you born in a damn outhouse?

And when you’re done, flush yer mess!! I KNOW your mama trained you better than this. Even a dog kicks a little dirt over his scat so Man Up, you little wusses. You’re giving us South Enders an odorous reputation. Although … I will say, the womenfolk might start appreciating a seat that’s left Up instead of one defiled and Down.

Every year we have folks who say they didn’t get an invitation to our little she-bang party, wring out the old, ring in the new. The truth is it’s an open invitation. We don’t much go out of our way to send out invites, we just assume if you have heard about it, you got the word. Anyway, this year you folks who need a notarized letter from us, well, this is it. By all means haul down here and help us and a few other South Enders drown our griefs and hope for a better Nuevo Ano.

Here is your New Year 2020 Invitation

So you’ve been wandering in the Wilderness these past couple of years, cast out from civilized norms, wondering where your country went, asking yourself if there was something more you could’ve done. And the answer is Of course there’s something more you could do. You could come to the annual South End New Year’s Party at Karen and Jack’s, a refuge from the storm and Stormy, a balm for self-imposed exiles waiting for the opportune time to return without asking for asylum. You been in the Asylum. Two years. It’s time to take back the Next Year. It’s time to breathe the free air of the South End. It’s time to be Optimistic once again. It’s time to Occupy America.
So haul on down to Karen and Skeeter’s annual New Year Bash, bring a dish, bring a bottle of cheer, bring a friend or two. You know the drill. 4015 S. Camano Drive. 2019 starts here.