The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

For most of my life I’ve had this quaint notion that school was, for the most part, meant to give you skills that you could use AFTER you LEFT school. Teach you, for instance, how to read so you could, on your own, pursue further education. Teach you, as an example, how to reason, how to analyze, how to navigate the world after graduation. Sure, I know, school was a means to acquiring the skills to get you employment, a job, even a career. But mostly I’d hoped it would encourage curiosity and offer the skills to explore that curiosity.

When I taught 8th grade back in the Dark Ages before computers or AI, my goal was to convince my little students that reading was the KEY to it all. You can’t read, well, life was going to be a rough ride. Now, of course, you can watch You-Tubes and even let ChatGPT substitute for your own thinking. Reading the 21st Century is like using a slide rule to do your math problems — are you kidding?? You got a computer to do that crap.

Now I know I sound like an old fogey, possibly even a Luddite, but I still believe in reading more than a few sentences of Google articles and calling it knowledge. More than half of us don’t read one single book in a year. 50% of us can’t read at 8th grade comprehension. I don’t think you have to go to college to be an intelligent person. I went to college with plenty of dumbasses. I’ve known plenty of people who never even cracked a book — and were proud of it. Some of these were actually intelligent, they just decided being an ignorant dumbass was perfectly fine.

I don’t know where the kids I taught reading to in 8th grade are now. Plenty didn’t want to read even though I let them pick Anything to read, just read, goddammit. I read them great books just to convince them reading could be enjoyable. We had entire classes, outside even, for reading days. Just read!!

My guess — just a wild shot in the dark — 50% never cracked a book after high school or college. Call me Old School. Call me Mr. Chips. But I’d hate to be a teacher now. Books? They don’t need no stinking books!

Cafes come and go on the island about as fast as the weather. Open up one day, seems like a month later they’ve put the CLOSED sign in the window, locked the doors and another business bites the beach sand. When I first got off the banana boat down by the Yacht Club, a boutique café hung a shingle where the first Senior Center thrift store would eventually take over. Seeing’s how there wasn’t much food service on the island, you’d figure a breakfast and lunch joint would have a pretty easy time making a success of it.

But you’d be wrong. The yuppie couple who ran the place offered macadamia nut waffles, strong fresh ground coffee (long before Starbucks ruled the world) and a menu of fresh vegetables, sprouts, whole wheat breads and local eggs and meats. They were maybe half a century ahead of their time.

I took a boatload of pals up from the smog-smitten city who were crashing at the shack for a wholesome breakfast and a little relief from the hangovers from the previous night’s revelries. We ordered big mugs of coffee and the owners went around the table studiously writing down our orders. Since they were the chief/cook/ and bottle washers, we waited a long time for our servings even though we were the only customers, but the coffee was refilled, our lethargy seemed to subside and life on this side of our foggy island was good once again.

At some point – about a gallon into the coffee – one of us inquired where the restroom might be. We were solemnly informed there was none. This was dire news indeed for nearly all of us. We shrugged it off and waited patiently for our breakfasts. And waited for our breakfasts. When they came, they came one at a time, with five minute intervals in between. Fine fare, however, and we ate our plate’s worth, individually as the rest watched enviously while our bladders swelled like a Guernsey at a dairy where the farmer overslept.

We ate fast. We refused further refills. We crossed our legs and slapped ourselves with knives and forks. We began low moans. I couldn’t tell you if the food was good. Maybe. Probably. All I know is 8 guys stood in the parking lot as soon as we could pay our bill and let loose the floodgates right beside our Volkswagen bus. If we left a tip, that was it, but near as I can tell, they never took it. A month later the café was closed and another dream bit the dust. Well, hit the mud….

We all make mistakes. So okay, us South Enders make a few more than most. I don’t know whether poverty leads to more tragedy per person or tragedy leads to more poverty. My Republican neighbors think they know. Even the ones who are poor and have more than their fair share of bad drama.

I’m not one who thinks money can buy you luck, but it can sure narrow the odds. And I am a believer in keeping a buffer between me and the wolves outside the shack door. Bad luck comes to us all; I just don’t want it to carry me over the Edge.

Jenny was driving her beat up Chevy station wagon to town a month ago. It’s a relic from the days of cheap gas, wide as a semi and half as long as the Exxon Valdez. She needs it to haul hay for her horses, she says. I could ask, of course, how it is a woman barely able to pay the rent can afford horses, but I’ve learned to keep my prying mouth shut. It’s a free country, they tell me, at least until the credit stops.

Jenny was lighting a Marlboro, trying to reach the length of Kansas to the cigarette lighter gizmo over by Abilene, and hit the CD replay to hear her favorite song one more time, dropped her unlit cig on the floormat and of course reached down to find it. Happens all the time. One brief moment of inattention, next thing you know, you’re in the ditch, wheels up, blood on the dash.

Jenny’s in shock, the ambulance hauls her to the Skagit hospital emergency room, Carl hauls the Exxon Valdez to his South End Towing impound lot back behind O-Zi-Ya trailer court, the sheriff issues a citation for Inattentive Driving, Jenny goes through a few surgeries for lacerations and a torn shoulder, the hospital and doctors bill her more money than she’s earned since 2004, the horses go hungry and are given away, Carl wants $600 to release her wagon, Jenny can’t work with a cast, probably couldn’t work with one, and now the rent is due.

I sure don’t want to cast judgement, but judgement is definitely at issue here. The very least I can say is if you live on the South End, watch where you’re going. It’s a winding narrow road. And trust me, the ditches are damn deep…..

Darlene’s Antique and Collectibles was once an honest to Abe vintage emporium. One hundred year old oak chests of drawers, apple cider presses newly oiled but still glowing with the patina of fruit juices, rusting resort signs, ornate brass beds lascivious with untold stories, dollhouses from the Victorians, real stuff, not facsimile. Old wood stoves she bought from South Enders converting to heat pumps, wringer washers still able to churn a family’s laundry, coil top refrigerators cooled by sulpher dioxide rather than Freon. The one I bought from Darlene punctured a line a year later and the SO2 in combination with moisture, what we chemists call H20, formed sulfuric acid, what I called when I dragged it outside hissing like Assad’s assassins: Chemical Death. Foliage turned brown Right NOW in an invisible line snaking into the woods.

Darlene was a huge woman. Sitting at her table by the front door where her brass cash register sat like a South Sea icon ready for sacrificial offerings, she was half Cajun voo-doo queen, half posterchild for diabetes and definitely mostly intimidating, especially after you got to know her. She had a network of pickers who scoured the thrift stores and junk shops and garage sales throughout the state. And she had a steady supply of sellers, mostly neighbors broke and desperate, willing to part with the mizzus’ prized china or her mother’s silver, rarely some good tool of their own. She could burn a Tennessee horse trader, sell you a knockoff you’d never learn wasn’t really old, spin you a yarn that was finer than spider thread. You had to be on your toes with Darlene. She had the scruples of a southern politician and the aim for the jugular of a gypsy car salesman.

When E-Bay drove her prices down and she wearied of watching the city slickers – what she called ‘cidiots’ – checking prices on their I-pads and tablets, she began to carry ‘gifts’ too, junky look-alikes of vintage signs, antiques knickknacks and craft items –what she called ‘crap’ items – but her sales plummeted despite watering the trade down and she closed up finally.

Rumor has it she moved down to Sedona or maybe Taos and opened up a high end art gallery for tourists. One of my neighbors told me she’d bought a Georgia O’Keefe signed print from a woman with 6 chins wearing a Navajo blanket shawl and enough silver earrings and turquoise bracelets to start a jewelry store. I’m guessing Darlene is still nicking us South Enders, just a longer drive for us to get fleeced.

You might think, what with a war in Ukraine and the destruction of Gaza by the ally we supply weapons to, the Commander-in-Chief would be a little too busy to concern myself with edicts banning modern architecture for future Federal buildings. Or task himself with running the Kennedy Center for the Arts in order to inflict his own artistic sensibilities. Or take on the interior decoration of the White House right down to the final gold filigree. And still find the time to play plenty of round of golf, pardon friends accused or convicted of crimes, market Trump crypto, MAGA hats and tennis shoes, choose unilaterally what actors and artists are to be honored at the Kennedy Center awards plus manage the dozens of lawsuits his policies and firings have generated.

The other day he held a 3 hour cabinet meeting —- not to discuss policy but to give each member the opportunity to praise and flatter him. Which all in obsequious turn, they did. Without a hint of embarrassment, no less! It was like watching POW’s paraded out by their captors for the camera to tape their confessions, each one testifying their treatment was very good despite obvious wounds and evident emaciation.

Hitler hated modern art too. His architecture leaned toward the brutal. Trump’s harken to Louis the 14th, maybe with Golden Arches for the entryway and plenty more gold throughout. Gaudy is back, gaudy is good. He’s building a ballroom for the White House. No doubt he’ll design it, choose the chandeliers, pick the color scheme (gold, of course) and declare it the greatest single architecture conceived since Jefferson’s Monitcello.

When he’s finished composing the inaugural music for the first grand ball, he can turn his attention to rewriting history for the Smithsonian. Eventually, maybe, he’ll end the Ukraine war, declare Gaza a Palestinian-free zone and award himself the Nobel Peace Prize. But first, there’s the Emmy, the Academy Award, the Pritzker for architecture, the Pulitzer for news that isn’t fake. He may need to remodel the Oval Office to fit it all in, but … he’s the man to do it.