The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I was out in the Back 40 this morning, chain sawing up some trees that blew down in the last few storms, what will, when I’m done bucking and splitting and hauling and stacking them, become our heat two years from now. Hard work, sometimes even dangerous, but part of the life I chose for myself back when I decided, as Joni Mitchell sang on Woodstock, to get back to the land and set my soul free. Nevertheless, as I approach my 70’s, I wonder when I’ll succumb to the temptation of a thermostat and gas heat.

Old age, so they tell me, is a state of mind. I wish my body felt the same way, but it wants to have a say in the debate too. We burn a carbon footprint of about 15 cord of wood a year, no doubt something the next generation will look back as fondly at as a Buick Roadmaster burning 10 miles per gallon. I guess I could argue that gas heat or electric heat have their downsides as well, but like I said, I’m nearly 70 and unless I want to move into a cave, chances are I’ve done my share of contributing to global warming already, no pardons or reprieves will be given.

Barring some unforeseen accident, I figure the day I put the chainsaw away in the shed one final time, foregoing woodcutting that year, that’s when I will consign myself to Old Age, no quibble. Just can’t do it anymore. I remember when my old man hung it up. He was in his mid-80’s and no, he didn’t heat his whole house with wood, just the fireplace. He quit heating his house back when he was about 75 when he moved into town from his lake place. He was a forester by trade and had worked in the Maine woods when he was a young man so woodcutting for him came naturally. I’m sure I’ve out cut him ten times over with a few close calls to make me glad I made it this long. Be nice to outlive him too, since he’s 95 and going fairly strong yet.

But the day will come, we both know, when age will catch up and I will call it quits too. A wise man, like my father, will know when that day arrives and accept it. Me, I’m not so sure. I’ll let you know when I am. Wise, I mean. I think old age is already rolled in.

I love a good holiday as much as the next yahoo … but c’mon, this Groundhog’s Day business, let’s be honest, the Chamber of Commerce out there in Pullmyleg, Pennsylvania has pulled a fast one on those of us who take meteorologic prediction seriously. Down here on the convergence zoned South End, No Way is a groundhog going to see his shadow on Feb. 2nd. Even if we had groundhogs! This thing just gives Science a bad name. And lately, the last thing it needs in these superstitious, Mayan Calendar, end-of-the-world times is a black eye over some mammalian hairball on the East Coast seeing its hairball shadow (or not) and then extrapolating that to El Nino or asteroid strikes on Wall Street or global warming.
Which is precisely why some of the more empirically minded boyz down at the Mabana Body Shop have been searching, in a deductive sort of methodology, an alternative Predictor of winter longevity. Hellfire, if winter’s just going to last until April, we figure there’s no point in fighting serious incentive-reducing Inevitability. We’ll just pull the covers up, collect unemployment and wait for spring. This is how civilizations thrive: they figure out tides and seasons for planting schedules and harvest times and happy hours.
The model the boyz constructed over the past decade or so is a local paradigm that utilizes a 5 gallon polyethylene bucket of fresh caught Dungeness crabs —- I KNOW you’re going to point out they’re illegal this time of season, but listen, we’re putting em back when the data is collected. Spirit of the Law, if not the Letter and that, in a clamshell is the very essence of the South End Way. —- So you got a pail of clacking claws and now you bring out a dog, any dog, any breed, random sampling, see? And you let the pooch check out the crustaceans. No shadows, no hibernating drowsy marmots. And if the crab gets a lock on Snoopy’s snout, voila, studies have shown that is a true omen of an early spring. The dog schnozz slips the noose, 6 more weeks of sleeping in.
Simple. Like Einstein says, the more elegant the theory, the higher the probability it’s correct. And the boyz down at the body shop will tell you, the accuracy here is in the 90 percentile range, statistically astounding. We’re not claiming, like those unabashed self -promoters in Pennsylvania, that this will predict spring for the entire country, but for all us Left Coasters, rest assured, Feb 2nd now has science as its bedrock foundation. We’ll leave it to the South End Chamber of Commerce how they want to capitalize on it. Crab Dog Day. Nice profitable ring to it, don’t you think, kind of like a cash register. If we can keep PETA at bay….

The man who addicted the world to caffeine says he’s thinking about running for President. Why not? If we can survive a few years with an ignorant but opinionated bullyboy, we can elect just about anybody for another few years. Congress is deadlocked and has been for quite awhile and will be for a lot longer. The government is running on auto-pilot now, the perfect metaphor for an automated future.

Trump ran multiple bankruptcies on his way to announcing he was the Dealmaker of dealmakers. Schultz bought a basketball team and managed to lose the entire franchise when he sold it to an Oklahoma City huckster. Seattle sports jocks will never forgive him, doesn’t matter how much they like his coffee. Schultz thought his managerial experience would shine right through in his tenure as Head Basketball Boy, an egotistical rich guy’s folly, something akin to thinking real estate deals are primers for world treaties. Still, there are plenty of folks out there in Java Land who might think a mocha magnate is worth a shot or even a double.

Me, I’m tired of billionaire politicians. Okay, probably just green with envy. Who wouldn’t want to spend his life on cellphones and in meetings strategizing how to get a hotel built in Moscow or a Starbucks on every corner in Shanghai? If the bizness of America is selling, these guyz ought to be able to run the country like a used car lot in Hoboken, no problem. The trouble is, a lot of government isn’t about capitalism. I know, this sounds like heresy in this new Gilded Age. As executive chairman at STARBUCKS CORP, Howard Schultz made $17,980,890 in total compensation. Of this total $807,693 was received as a salary, $843,750 was received as a bonus, $8,096,499 was received in stock options, $7,893,379 was awarded as stock and $339,569 came from other types of compensation. This information is according to proxy statements filed for the 2017 fiscal year. But take a look at this and then what he paid his employees, then tell me these are the CEO’s we want being President or filling cabinet posts. And the last thing I need is a double shot expresso of that right now.

And yeah, I know, money talks and bullshit walks in corporate America. Although lately it seems like both are doing a lot of talking. Personally I think a politician ought to learn some governing skills, you know, little things like managing a city or maybe even a state, at least do some time in a legislature and learn the ropes. If all you can show on your resume is your big fat bank account, c’mon, you wouldn’t hire yourself as a barista. And you certainly wouldn’t make yourself manager of the joint. Even if you are the damn owner.

I went shopping this morning. Not a favorite pastime of mine, but a man has to do what a man has to do and if pushing a cart around a box store is required, count me in. Reluctantly. So with gritted teeth I cruised the fluorescent aisles with my other fellow sufferers. Oh, I KNOW some folk enjoy the pleasures of shopping, the surprise of a new sale, the shared consumerism of our neighbors. Call me Curmudgeon.

The first store I needed to hit was mercifully empty of cart-wielding maniacs this early on a Monday morning. The nice couple in front of me had a cute dog, not a service dog, just a pet mongrel they felt bad leaving in the pickup on a cold day, why not bring it in leashless and let it wander with the rest of us mutts. It immediately took a dump right in the middle of aisle # 4. Just like a walk in the park, the hound must have figured. The couple called its name, Jersey or Jerky, something like that and all three left the steaming mess behind.

Even out by me on the scofflaw South End, folks carry a little scoop bag for their critter’s leavings, just a neighborly gesture in these gentrified times. At my park I caretake a few folks understand the ‘poop bag’ concept — they’ll bag it then toss the bag onto the grass before they leave. It must be a harder concept than I figured and maybe eventually they’ll get the hang of it.

The couple in my store, I don’t think they’ll make that leap at all, ever. Someone else can clean up after their pooch, it’s not their problem, it’s not their store, it’s not anything to worry about and anyway they have shopping to do, no time for Turd Patrol. Me, I drift toward the pneumatic exit doors and out to the littered parking lot, my truck and on to the next big box. Like I said, a man has to do what some might not. But I never dreamed shopping included dodging dog doo.