The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Two Toke Tom and myself were quaffing a couple of Christmas cheers down at the Pilot House Lounge yesterday, talking about the State of the Union, the last election, Santa’s illegal immigration status and our plans for the holidays. Me, I go away with the mizzus for 3 or 4 days, somewhere that hasn’t heard of Christmas or else is too impoverished to want to participate. We go with a few other childless friends, fellow bah humbuggers, hoping to avoid the DMZ of the War on Christmas we’ve been hearing about for way too many years.

“And you?” I asked Two Toke.

“Same drill,” he answered, holding his glass up for Jerry behind the bar to refill. Jerry had a red Santa stocking cap on, the tail slung over his shoulder. The place was humming and Jerry was hustling to keep up. “Going down to the Shelter and serve grub to the homeless,” Tom said, draining the last of his current beer. Tom had been doing this since I could remember.

“You make me feel like Scrooge’s black sheep kid,” I muttered and nodded to Jerry that yeah, I’d take another round, Tiny Tim would have to go hungry while his old man got hammered at the pub.

“Guilty conscience?” Jerry asked. “Not for long,” I answered, “maybe about one more beer. Tom here serves Christmas dinners to the homeless.”

“I get a free dinner myself,” he told Jerry, almost apologetically. Jerry shook his head. “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown,” he said over his shoulder with the Santa tail bobbing a white ball. When he came back with our drinks he said to Two Toke, “On the house, man.”

“Mine too?” I chimed in. Jerry laughed. “Oh, what the hell, yours too. Merry Christmas, boyz.”

“You too, Jerry,” T.T. said.

“And to all a good night,” I answered, ever the comic smartass. What I meant to say was we need a few more Toms in this world.

Skeeter’s gonna go into exile for a few days, at least til this War on Christmas subsides or there’s a negotiated truce. Santa’s immigration status is a bit in doubt, what with Trump calling for Border Walls, so we’re going away a few days til those reindeer visas get straightened out. If you got a jag for more of these pithy epistles from the South End, scroll down a couple of years, see what you missed. Course, you probably didn’t miss much but it might cure these election year blues if you take a time machine back to that simpler, happier era we once enjoyed. Just don’t go too far back….

I don’t need to tell you Christmas started a little early this year. I know, it does every year. Apparently there’s no need to wait til we’ve digested half a ton of turkey to move on to the next holiday, just step right off from overeating to overconsuming. If you’re worried about a so-called war on Christmas, I got some real good news for you: Santa is winning! And so, apparently, are the retailers and so are the Chinese.

Even on the Scroogish South End the muzak droning Bing Crosby chestnuts has become a tinselly tinnitus. Folks leave their Christmas lights up 365 days now, why bother crawling up a precarious ladder to pull the shack decoration down for the one month we aren’t counting down the day til the credit card bills hit JACKPOT?

Call me a curmeudgeon, label me a Grinch and hit me on the head with Aunt Pearl’s fruitcake, but our holiday strategy is we hightail it off the South End when Christmas gets close. Nowadays we grab a few friends who don’t have kids or family that necessitate a 2nd mortgage to fill a tree with presents and we head to places so bleak, so impoverished, so beaten down that they don’t bother with lights or tinsel or commercial trappings. Used to be we could escape the hoopla down here, but not anymore. Naw, you have to be farther off the beaten path to escape the holiday onslaught than Camano Island, even the South End.

I’d tell you where we exile ourselves, but then half of you would follow us off to serenity and a quiet holiday devoid of WalMarts and strip mall outlets. No offense, we’re sure not trying to wage war on Christmas. And we sure don’t want to collapse the economy. We only want to celebrate Christmas the way it once was, with friends and good cheer. Just not all year long.

Mama said there’d be days like this. You wake up in the dark on the shortest day of the year, maybe you should expect what awaits you, maybe you should know the risk you take by ignoring nature’s call to hibernate, maybe old age should’ve taught you something. But life is nothing if not risk. And being a survivor of 66 years, hell, I threw off those quilts and prepared to embrace another day down in the wilds of the South End. Took a couple shots of caffeine, read the paper, realized once more Trump would actually be President of my country soon, the country I no longer recognize and may not actually want to acknowledge, brushed my teeth and headed down to the shack for another bracing day of glass cutting and glass-putting-back-together.

The radio told me another billionaire was going to be appointed to some cabinet position or other, Trump’s kids were going to run his empire so there wouldn’t be any conflicts of interest, the Russian ambassador to Turkey had just been assassinated, a truck had killed and maimed innocent bystanders in Berlin and Aleppo was still being destroyed. Civilization seemed to be teetering on the precipice. That, or it was just business as usual.

By the time the sun stumbled up over the horizon I was beginning to feel the coffee kicking in, the shack warming up, the day settling into its shortened ellipse. I walked out to get more wood from the shed and looking over toward the neighbor’s field I noticed a tree down. The wind had howled a little during the night so it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise, but damn, it was by the wellhouse and as I walked toward it I kept thinking, don’t let it be on the roof, please don’t be on that roof.

Of course it was on the roof. Direct hit. Just snapped right off at the base of the trunk, landed smack center on the roof of the new wellhouse I’d built just a year ago. Damn and double damn! Well, you live in the woods, you have to expect these things, the price you pay, I guess. Free firewood and the opportunity to remodel your outbuildings. Last year a huge hemlock snapped halfway up and crushed the boathouse. Sick feeling, I’m telling you, walking down the trail and seeing that roof down on my little homemade sailboat with a broken tree crushing it.

But I got out the chainsaw and managed to cut the cherry tree off the wellhouse without too much further damage. Bucked most of it up, repaired the shake roof and went back to work in the shack. Aleppo was still being bombed into oblivion, Trump had another General in mind for his team, the sun was already starting to arc downward. They told me on the radio this morning that the daylight today was going to be one second longer than yesterday. It’s a hopeful sign.

Says here in the newspaper I read every morning, the one nobody believes is telling the truth, that 1 in 6 of us have taken some kind of pharmaceutical to relieve the anxiety of modern living. And here I thought TV, marijuana and alcohol were doing an adequate job.

Never hurts to supplement the relief. These are tough times and when the going gets tough, the tough turn to medication. I confess I haven’t consulted my primary physician yet about my stresses. Soon as I get a primary one, maybe I’ll see what he has on his shelf for Trump Dystopia or Faux News Phobia. Gonna take some powerful mood-altering meds to bodyslam those back down on reality’s mat. “Take two of these and call me in the morning. Avoid television news programs and get a little more exercise, Mr. Daddle. Wouldn’t hurt if you canceled those newspaper subscriptions either.”

I need a new drug, Doc. One that won’t keep me awake. One that won’t make me itch. One that won’t knock me out. A drug that doesn’t come with 50 side effects, one of them being suicidal ideation. Write me a prescription for the blues….

I tried immersing myself in work, even though it meant standing in a cold shack in a winter coat waiting for the woodstove to do its magic, usually about three hours after putting a match to the kindling. Yeah, I should’ve turned the radio to music, not news stations, but addiction is hard to kick. There must be a methadone for politics, Doc, something like that drug they give to alcoholics, the one that about kills the user if he takes another drink, give him pause next time he opens that bottle or turns the dial to BBC.

But the weather has turned Siberial and I couldn’t feel my feet half the morning. Where the hell is Global Warming when you need it? I retreated to the house here where I’m tending the fires all day and half the night. Stopped the subscription to two papers and downsized to the Seattle Times and the ever-newsless Stanwood Gazette. Helped a little, but what news filters through, from Aleppo to Trump’s latest tweet, chills me further. What I need, Doc, what I need as soon as possible, is a new drug.