The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

If the blog site here goes dark the next few days, it’s because we’re in transit and I’m grappling with technical difficulties. As usual. Please standby. Our technicians will be working on the problem. Yesterday I punched something on my brother’s Apple and locked the thing up, core to peel. Took the mizzus (the technician) only a few minutes after I’d spent two hours. Then the wireless keyboard pooped out. I changed the batteries, tried to work through the control system then finally gave it to her while I went over to my old man’s house. He’s got the same computer, same keyboard and lo and behold, it didn’t work either.

Course, I figured it was the network probably down for repairs or something, but accidentally discovered the POWER BUTTON ingeniously hidden in the side of the keyboard. I’d inadvertently hit both to the OFF position. Ho ho, mystery solved. And only an hour or two lost.

Anyway, we’re leaving the comfort zone of working computers now, heading toward Lake Superior where the natives probably have never heard of Twitter or Apple or television. If by chance they have and if I can barter some time from them, maybe I’ll get word out through this site that we’re doing fine, that the ice hasn’t locked us in yet, that winter hasn’t descended on the upper latitudes. If not, no doubt we’ll have a saga to share later in the spring when the floes break up. Meantime, try to avoid the news, faux or real. You surely got better things to do….

I’m learning all sorts of things in my old age, not by choice really, mostly out of necessity. Lots of my stuff is falling apart and has gone to the Dark Place where no amount of cursing or kicking will bring it back to workable condition. I dismantled my computer last week, pulled out little connectors, changed a battery, beat on it with a fist, but it really didn’t want to power back up again after I’d turned it off when we left for a vacation trip. Lesson learned. The buggers want to be awake. They don’t need sleep and they don’t dream. Mark one up for the machines.

My table saw, however, died a smoky death in mid-cut. Slowed down, made a strange garbled cry of protest, then blew the shop fuses. It wanted to sleep forever. Which, after some amount of troubleshooting, I decided it deserved a proper burial. But not before a few well aimed kicks to its cheap aluminum shroud. Good riddance. I had a backup saw ready to go. Course, it needed to be completely assembled with parts cannibalized from previous incarnations. Only took most of a day, but in the end, mark one up for us humans. So what if it’ll probably run for only a short time before it too joins the growing junkpile out back.

Next day, the refrigerator decided to stop chillin. I know, it seemed like a conspiracy to me too. Revenge of the Machines, soon to be a major motion picture. You know, if the TV will still play DVD’s. I did what any modern repairman would do in these days of internet research — I went straight to Google. Where I learned that 21st century refrigerators (ours is a 20th century model) have a fan in the freezer compartment that pushes cold air down into the fridge area and sure enough, I had blocked that port with frozen goods enough to raise the temperature below by 20 degrees. Only took a few hours to figure all this out, simple fix. We’ll call this one a draw.

Scroungers, Packrats and Hoarders

Clyde stopped by our place yesterday, wanted to know if I wanted some wood flooring. Clyde’s notorious for scrounging lumber — beams, 2×4’s, plywood, chopped off rafters and joists full of nails — he takes it all, he and his partner Fred. They’re true South Enders, no building parts are too unworthy for future projects. No oddly shaped root or burled tree trunk couldn’t be imagined as a trellis or a doorway or a garden gate. Their greenhouse/apartment is a testament to homesteader ingenuity, from the recycled plumbing for a radiant heat floor to the gnarly limbs of a cedar tree that frame a window made from sliding glass door panels. The roof is raftered with bridge beams and salvaged lumber, all covered with earth and plantings, a green ecosystem.

So when Clyde asks if I want some wood flooring, red lights go off and a siren shrieks deep down in my hippocampus. “You don’t want it yourself?” I ask, meaning, what’s wrong with this flooring if you boyz are turning it down? Clyde avows how they don’t need flooring and anyway, it’s all mismatched remnants. Like they don’t have mismatched remnants from one end of their property to the next??? “Use em for furniture,” I advise. “I took my leftovers and made cabinets and bookcases, banjos, hell, it’s hardwood.”

“We’re jammed up,” Clyde says sadly. “Stuff we got now is getting powder post beetles. We couldn’t use it all in the rest of our lifetimes.” Which is true! They’re beyond Scroungers now, heading toward Hoarders. It’s a fine line, I know, and only a packrat like myself who’s scrounged most of his life is qualified to define the slip from Collector to Psychopathology. Clyde, I diagnosed, had stepped back from the Abyss. Enough was finally enough. Clutter was one thing, tunnels to the kitchen and bathroom quite another.

No mas! There comes a time when a sane man knows implicitly to STOP. Before it’s too late. Before madness descends like a dark curtain blotting light and reason.

Today I picked up 10 boxes of hardwood flooring, enough to lift the front end of my truck. No, I don’t really need flooring. But, you never know, right? Now if I can just figure out where to store all this wood until I need it….

Early this morning I got a phone call. Lately all my calls are from charitable organizations asking for help. I figure mostly they’re legit, but how would anyone know? Breast Cancer Societies, Police Benevolence, Fire Fighter Funds, Veteran’s Organizations, environmental groups, you name it, they’re asking for donations. Volunteers man the phones, cold calls, too much competition with hurricane and earthquake relief, long day, I bet.

My early bird caller today greeted me with “Hi, Grandpa, how you doin’?”, no doubt soliciting for the Lost Grandson Society. I said I was doin’ fine, how bout yerself? Well, my heretofore unknown grandkid wasn’t doing all that well, he confessed in a strangled voice conveying pain and anguish aplenty. He’d been at a wedding last night, probably a relative of ours I never heard of, and he’d been pulled over by the police and well one thing led to another, he’d had a few drinks but he wasn’t drunk, he assured me, try explaining that to the cops and so, here he was, in jail, in trouble and who could he turn to for bail but his old gramps?

“Can you help me, Grandpa?” he asked pitifully, muffling a sob. The kid was good, I’ll give him that much. “Blood’s thicker than water, Boy,” I replied and he asked me to write down his case number and the name of his public defender who I could wire the money to. By then I’d tired of the charade and hung up. Two minutes later his court appointed attorney called me back.

“You little low-life creep. What rock do you live under?” Which prompted an immediate click, then on to the next phone number on the list. I’ve been botherd by this all day. One call in a hundred they must get a poor Alzheimer person, an elderly man or woman with a good heart who can’t recall their kids’ names now much less their grandkids’, who might want to help Little Billy who’s stuck in a jailcell, only asking for $1000 for bail.

It’s a cruel enough world without filling the kiddlie pools with reptiles like these. I understand the folks who prey on the greedy with Nigerian money scams, but not the ones who feed on kind and generous hearts. My next grandkid, I hope to hell I do a better job raising him….

I guess if you’re not the kind of leader who’s interested in history, you might have missed the Katrina debacle. Day after day, week after week of video showing the victims of that hurricane struggling to put their lives back together, struggling to survive, calling out for help back in the swamps. The nation got a dose of what reality was like down in the delta so that when President Bush flew in and shook the hand of his Disaster-in-Chief, telling him what a great job he was doing, the country was not only shocked, they were pissed off.

Trump flew into Puerto Rico without reviewing the film clips of Katrina’s aftermath. As usual his administration was doing a great job, fantastic job. But the trouble is all those lying journalists down there shooting footage of the carnage. Folks without food or water or medical care. Humanitarian shipments sitting idle at the docks with no diesel to run the trucks to deliver all those items. No truck drivers. No open roads. No electrical grid. No communication lines. No clue. The mayor of San Juan decried the President’s characterization of the clean-up as a Good News Story. “Dammit,” she said, “this is not a good news story, this a people are dying story.”

The President, true to form, attacked the messenger, saying the mayor expected everything to be done for Puerto Rico when they should be doing it themselves. Even George Bush didn’t make the mistake of telling Louisiana to get off their swamp cracker Cajun butts and suck it up. But he still paid a huge price in popularity for an apparent lack of conservative compassion. Folks in this country can be hard hearted, but video of half naked kids drinking polluted water from a filthy creek touch a chord. They expect some help from the damn government, not criticism the victims aren’t grabbing their own bootstraps.

You ignore history at your peril, that’s for sure. Tweet all you want about those crybaby NFL players, but the evening news loves a video of devastation and misery even more than a hot controversy revolving around the flag and the anthem. We aren’t so callous yet that we blame the victims for a Category 5 hurricane. Those people on the 6 o’clock news aren’t faux and they need some help. My advice to the President, send in the Marines, send in the Navy, send in some helicopters, send in whatever it takes. If you don’t, no sunny press conference about the great job the administration is doing is going to save the nation of Puerto Rico. Or you.