The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I lived a fairly large chunk of my formative years in the dairy state of Wisconsin so naturally I follow their politics which is everything important to the Dairylanders outside of the Green Bay Packers, fishing and hunting. In recent years the good folks of Wisconsin have gerrymandered their districts to such an algorithmically fine degree that now the GOP has gained full control of the legislature, the governor’s office and the judiciary, the whole shitaree. The pigs are definitely at the trough, to use an agrarian phrase … which may be why some lawmakers are hoping to change the license plate logo that now reads AMERICA’S DAIRYLAND. I’m not sure what they have in mind for a replacement, maybe something along the lines of LET THE RICH RULE.

Every week or so I come across some article in the newspaper concerning my old homeland. This week a buddy who is also an ex-pat escapee sent me one concerning legislation to allow children of all ages to hunt deer. You know, if they had an adult monitor of course. Maybe you never hunted with a kid in tow, some feisty fellow with a .30-.30 he can barely lift up to his bony little shoulder, safety probably OFF and excited as hell for the first opportunity to kill something bigger than himself. I have. Trust me, it’s a horrifyingly frightening experience. So frightening, in fact, that I quit hunting in the woods of Northern Wisconsin right then and there. I’d rather hunt Siberian tigers with a Bowie knife than hunt near a kid with an itchy trigger finger and no sense of firearm safety, I don’t care if he has 15 adult monitors in the brush with him all sporting NRA logos tattooed on their asses. He’s going to shoot at anything that moves more than likely.

I’ve known people, adult people, who have inadvertently shot and killed their hunting partners. One shot his father. Another shot a brother. The NRA will tell you guns don’t kill people. And they’re half right. But totally wrong. What is true is how it changed some lives forever. The father killer went crazy. The one who shot his brother couldn’t live with the guilt and eventually killed himself. I’m not sure how many stupid deaths will result from grade school hunters. But if you think Wisconsin’s GOP legislators aren’t on top of this, consider the bill this weekend that seeks to ban abortions because abortions would reduce the future workforce of the state. You have to admire the problem-solving tenacity of these lawmakers.

Given that admirable ability, allow me to offer a new license plate option to my favorite Red State legislators: KILL A FEW SAVE A FEW. Compassionate conservatism still lives in Wisconsin.

Maybe you can remember when we used to make fun of George Bush’s mangled speech. Ho ho, hilarious stuff, but probably not the makings of a coffee table book on the wit and wisdom of the 43rd president. We don’t really expect high minded elocution from our elected leaders so much anymore. Kennedy was eminently quotable and Obama, but most of our Top Guns, they’re not so much Cicero, maybe plenty of Clint Eastwood.

But the present occupier of the White House, well, it’s hard to imagine anyone less eloquent or serious of mind. Anyone older than eleven or twelve years old anyway. What do you reply to someone who tells an interviewer with millions of viewers he has a good brain he’s said a lot of things. If the interviewer is a Fox News commentator, you fawningly nod your head and agree whole-heartedly. In a fair and balanced sort of way. It would be impolite to roll your eyes or laugh out loud, I know, but c’mon. I’ve got a good brain and I’ve said a lot of things??? The one contradicts the other. At least when logic made sense and the world seemed rational. Which, lately, you have to admit, they don’t anymore.

There are those who suggest Mr. Trump has suffered brain damage in the past decade or two. Syphilis perhaps or mini-strokes. They point to earlier syntax that seemed less confused and posit that the man in the White House is damaged mentally. A lot of us would agree, of course, but we’re virulent liberal snowflakes and nothing Trump says would make us nod our heads fawningly in agreement. And anyone who would probably would nod again when he changes his viewpoint next day 180 degrees. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson said, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Hobgoblin of little minds. Nice line. Ralph never met anyone like Donald apparently. If he had, I bet he would have changed that quote. Me, I prefer a certain degree of consistency, hobgoblin or not, and it’s disconcerting to have a Leader who brags that he has said a lot of things. I’m with the folks who think something has happened to the man that has slowly dissolved cognitive function. The question we citizens should ask is: Igor, where did you find that very good brain?

UTU

The Southendomish live in government housing in the fishing grounds they once had a name for but don’t anymore. All of us on the South End would live there if we could imagine a reservation or remember our elders or if television wasn’t invented because we’re all part of the same tribe, we just don’t know it. Charlie Johnson, who owns the South End Trading Post, who sells us our cigarettes and canned meat and our 24 ounce high alcohol beer, he knows we’re all kin whether we’re great grandsons of immigrant loggers or the grandparents of native babies left in our care by drug addict parents. We all would dream the Ghost Dance but the ghosts are all us now and the drums long ago stopped beating. Charlie, just like the rest of us, stopped Spirit Chasing and went after the money.

There’s a playground in the center of the dilapidated government houses, mostly rusty chainswings and a slide that’s tilted toward Saratoga Passage where the concrete beneath it heaved over and cracked. Walking by the other evening, I watched Jimmy Walks-the-Talk sitting on the rotted seat of one of the swings, head bent forward, pushing himself slowly back and forth in the fading winter light which looked to him like his future. Laughter left this playground a long time ago and took its friend Hope with it.

Maybe if the reservation had been nearer the freeway, we could’ve built a casino, sold cheap gas and untaxed cigarettes. But we’re a world away from an interstate teeming with gamblers and chainsmokers. No one would come to our Las Vegas. But those are the dreams we dream now, not the ones we’ve forgotten. The kids have computers now and their own cellphones. They live where the river has dried up and the mountains have crumbled and the skies are grey with microwave grids. So do we. The real world is dissolving into the past. We don’t see it yet, but so are we.

Jimmy, I know without seeing him now, is swinging in the dark, eyes closed, sightless as the windows across the unmowed football field with no curtains and the flickering blue electronic lights. He should go home. I should go home too. We’ve just forgotten where it is, is all.

Open Mic (I have to host a new Open Mic tonight at the Family Resource Center in Stanwoodopolis so let me practice on you folks first)

Well, I want to thank all of you for letting this old geezer be the first yahoo to introduce the Open Mic Program. When I was a pup we didn’t have anyplace like the Center here, a place for kids to go to after school. A place to meet up with friends, maybe learn how to play a guitar, listen to music, all that stuff you folks do. Naw, my backwash town had a pool hall, that was about it.

Big Fred ran the place. He didn’t allow fighting — you had to go out back. He didn’t allow smoking or drinking — you had to go out back. Gambling was okay. I mean, it WAS a pool hall, not a knitting circle. Big Fred was like a father to some of us juvenile delinquents. Not a good father, don’t get me wrong. Kinda like the Dad from hell, now that I think about it.

A lot of the kids that hung out in the pool hall, well, I’d say it changed their lives. Not really for the better now that I think about it. Kind of a school for criminality. Me, I did learn to shoot pool without going to jail. Some of my buddies, they didn’t learn pool and they still ended up behind the 8 ball. And prison bars.

I’ve never played before at an Open Mic. Too shy, maybe. Too scared, probably. I got a little band, the South End String Band, used to have eleven of us, now we downsized to 5. Easier for me to hide in the back. Still scary, though.

Our first public appearance we set up in the Tyee Store parking lot. You never been to the Tyee Store parking lot, it’s not much bigger than this room. Half the customers left their rigs running so we’d play to empty cars pumping exhaust fumes on us. Next gig we set up at Elger Bay Store’s picnic table, just OFF the parking lot, saved us carbon monoxide poisoning and the crowd sometimes swelled to 3 or 4 curious shoppers.

We thought we’d made the Big Time when we hit Haggen’s at Christmas. Big box grocery. Indoors even!! Course, they stuck us next to the ATM machine and folks wanting to get cash for the big tips they were probably planning to leave us had to wade through eleven yahoos. And a partridge in a pear tree….

We played for some fundraisers on Camano and then we played a benefit to Save the Grange in 2004. 700 people came to help us. $5 spaghetti dinner and music by us. We raised enough to keep them afloat and the rest is history. Well, okay, not much history but hey, we’re still here. And so is the Grange.

What I’m trying to say is this: if you never put yourself on the line, never get up and play your song, that’s okay. What matters is you play it for yourself. But … if you want to share it, this might be a good start. And who knows, someday you might get that life-changing audition for the South End String Band. Anyway, lI’m going to give it a try. If I seem nervous, it’s because I am….