The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The Flatheads were parked at the Diner, their vintage machines waxed and gleaming in the packed dirt parking lot. They meet every Wednesday morning, rain, shine or engine check warning, slide a few tables together, then hold court as they argue after-market carburetors and auto body strategies. And, of course, politics du jour. The rest of us customers either avoid Wednesdays or else come for the show as a willing audience. I count myself in the latter.

Today’s improv started out with a lively discussion of Jerry’s newly purchased ’50 GMC 5 window pickup, original paint, completely stock, nearly immaculate except for a small rust hole in the left quarterpanel. The Flatheads debated whether Jerry should leave the original paint alone or go for a new spray job, an old argument between the purists and the car show enthusiasts.

But somewhere between the spray booth boyz and the ‘let er be’ crowd, the conversation veered without warning into the deep ditch of this year’s elections. Fairlane Frank, a proponent of two tone Fords, had tossed a fork with a clatter on to his half eaten chicken fried steak, splattering white gravy across the formica DMZ. “Trump’s no Republican,” he growled in a mouthful of rage and food. “He’s hi-jacked the whole party.” Pat, proud owner of a 1972 Gremlin and recipient of countless jeers and guffaws, cheerily suggested the time might be right for a 3rd party. “The Know Nothings,” he suggested as a name.

And so it began…. Bel Aire Bobby retorted that we already have that party, opening up a wild round of just which party qualified before Brenda, coffee pot in hand, said, “Maybe you boys should stick with 4 barrel carburetors and dual hemis, leave the politics to the professionals.”

Frank started to object but Brenda stared him down with her headlights on high beam while she poured seconds and thirds. “Frank, I’m makin minimum wage here. No benefits, no insurance, no 401-K. Now my kid needs an operation. Trust me, you don’t want to get me going on politics.” And with that, she whirled to the next table. None of the car guyz said a word for a full minute. Like the man said, all politics is local. But when they left, the tip from the boyz, usually measley, was enough to buy Pat’s Gremlin and pay for a paint job to boot.

This past week I hauled up north to my dentist and had my teeth cleaned. For most of my life I’ve been told that flossing is next to godliness, that it’ll prevent plaque build-up and gum disease, that if I were to neglect it, I would probably be at risk for everything from halitosis to heart attacks. Today, the news told me and all my floss flagellating friends, this is scientifically unprovable. Flossing, according to the latest studies, makes no more difference to my dental health than if I gargled with holy water.

Great. A year or so ago I received the news that baby aspirin, forever touted as a hedge against plaque build-up in arteries and therefore heart attacks, was probably not much help. Might even be offset by increased incidents of stroke. So much for the wonder drug of aspirin. So much for listening to the advice of health professionals. You wonder why folks go down to the supplement store and spend fortunes on snake oil, maybe this is why. You might as well believe what you want, the so-called experts are just as phony.

One year whole milk is a killer, better drink skim, this year a study claims we need that kind of fat. Butter, might as well eat DDT, now it’s margarine that’s demonized. Sugar, holy moley, white sugar will eat you alive. Now the diet stuff, worse yet. What’s a poor boy to do???? I don’t know about you, but I like to believe — and science may contradict me tomorrow, then support me the next week, etc. — that we are creatures of the planet Earth, most of us, and we evolved with a diet of natural stuff. All those foods we made easier to cook or made from chemistry labs, well, I’m not saying they’ll give you cancer and make your hair fall out or your teeth rot, I’m just saying we didn’t really get exposed to those things in our climb from the ooze to the treetops.

Folks think science will bring them closer to immortality, and don’t get me wrong, I believe in science, but we’re really looking for magic bullets, pharmaceutical panaceas, artificial remedies, all those medical cures advertised to us old farts on TV every damn night. Just ignore the cautionary list of adverse effects, then go bug your doctor for a cure-all anyway.

I don’t know if I’ll keep on flossing or not now. I probably won’t lose sleep over it, but if I do, I’ll check with my pharmacist and take what he recommends. Just so long as one of the side effects isn’t gum rot.

I just read where the Lutheran Church up north was having a ‘Paws Prayers and Praise’ this week. Course, I checked to see if this was an April Fool’s Joke, but … it’s July, so I presume this is for real. Not that I think furry souls couldn’t use some ‘saving’. Doggie treats were being offered, I’m betting as puppy sacrament and no doubt wine in a bowl, blood of the … well, hopefully nobody brings their lamb to the PP&P.

Mainstream churches — so I’ve heard — are losing membership. The kids go for the evangelical mega-churches where the pastors are hip and wear Garth Brooks style microphones like the stars they are. We’ll have contests soon on cable TV: American Pastor. “That was great, Jimmy, really brought them to their knees.” “Sorry, Clyde, Cotton Mather was more fun than you.” “Got to kick you off the stage, Ralph, those collection plates were a little lean.”

It’s not easy selling religion to the masses these days, don’t kid yourself. You need an angle, you need a hook, you need a P.R. agent and you definitely need Facebook. Attention spans are pretty short and sermons, well, c’mon, if they won’t fit on a Tweet, they’re too long, get over yourself. Summarize, summarize, sum it up and move on to the Christian rock music.

You’re not going to lecture to a pet, that’s for sure. Butt sniffing, that’s about the longest they’re in for. Butt sniffing is not in the Bible, not the King Jim version for sure, maybe the Dead Sea Scrolls but I doubt it. And I don’t want to mention leg humping. I KNOW that’s not in the Old or New Testament. Not saying it’s a sin, but geez, in a church? A church that doesn’t even like human humping if it’s not man on woman. In the sanctity of marriage. Well, enough said about that….

I may have to go down to this Paws Prayer and Praise, see for myself. It does though, smack of … I don’t know … dare I say it? Bestiality. There, I said it. Animal love, is it wrong? Well, I don’t know but this seems desperate, a slippery slope of 4 legged forgiveness, feral feelings and potential poop scooping in the House of the Lord. If nothing else, hopefully anyway, it should be a joyful noise, all that barking.

This morning I read about a guy who is planning to dive 25,000 feet from a plane. Without a parachute. He plans to land in a net held up 20 stories high by two cranes. He’s tested this with dummies. One dummy shot right through the webbing of the net, but I hear it’s okay. Still a dummy, though.

I’m always puzzled by people like this. Not one ounce of me has that urge for thrill seeking, death defying acts. I don’t picture myself conquering Mt. Everest without oxygen, I don’t want to bungee jump off bridges into deep gorges, I don’t imagine myself in a Formula One racecar hitting 220 miles per hour going into the turns. If you look up the word Cautious in the dictionary, you probably will find my mug shot hiding behind a tree. It’s not as if I haven’t taken my share of risks, but I don’t go looking for them. Sometimes they’re unavoidable. Sometimes they’re the result of stupid mistakes. Mistakes I wouldn’t want to make twice.

Harry, a buddy of mine, offered to pay my fare for a skydiving jump back when I first got to Seattle. He’d taken a jump out in Issaquah a couple months before and he was totally hooked so now he was looking for converts to his new adrenaline fueled addiction. No thanks, I said. He could hardly believe his ears. He repeated his offer, thinking maybe I was hard of hearing. “It’s a Total Rush!” he kept saying. “I’ll pay for your first dive. After that, you’ll be hooked too. It’s amazing. Amazing!”

I thanked him again and declined his offer. “What??? Are you afraid??”
“Afraid?”I said, “Afraid?? Jump out of an airplane and hope whoever stuffed my parachute did it right? Yeah, that would scare me. I don’t even like roller coasters, but I’m sure as hell not jumping out of an airplane with no margin of error.”

Harry laughed at me and explained about the backup chute. Called me a coward. Ridiculed my fear. “We’ll go this weekend,” he cried, I guess figuring I’d rather be frightened than forever tagged as a Coward. “Won’t cost you one dime and you’ll thank me later.”

Harry and I rafted a river once together, but we never jumped out of an airplane, no doubt the thrill of a lifetime. Harry’s a quadriplegic now after getting hit by a truck riding along a highway. He was always an aggressive bike rider, like everything else he did. He’d probably tell you it was a small price to pay, that life isn’t worth living without taking risks. I’d answer that it was plenty risky enough already.

And by the way, that skydiver landed in the net okay. The paper said his wife and family were watching from nearby. A hot air balloon in Texas hit a power line and all 16 passengers were killed. Today I’m thinking of just staying home. Why take unnecessary chances?

Week after week, month after month, I’ve watched the little Scandihoovian burg on the other side of the bridge to the island, grow smaller and smaller down on the sewage flats of the floodplain. The bookstore just closed after three decades, a couple of taverns that were there when I came here are shuttered and up for sale, the empty storefronts are mounting up. Down at the Viking Village even the Dollar Store went under and you know and I know, when the Dollar Stores go belly up, we got troubles, capital T, right here in River City. And they don’t rhyme with pool. The Viking Village megaplex still sports the ever popular Uff-Da Shoppe with its witty collection of coffee mug Norwegian jokes, plus the barber shop and the laundromat and the Duck Inn café. Anchoring the other side of the dead Dollar store is the headquarters of the GOP. To say the place is as bustling as a morgue is optimistic hyperbole.

The Fresh Alternative Medicine Dispensary, the medical marijuana retail shop next to the police station, is the latest in a string of businesses dead on arrival now that the City Council voted to rescind its permits. State law now requires pot permits for both recreational and medical. We want those taxes on medical we didn’t get previously and the legislature finally figured out that the best way to do that was combine the two and tax it all. Duh. Pot outlets opened up on the island, in nearby Conway, up in Mt. Vernon, over in Arlington, down in sleepy little Silvana. Prohibition, needless to say, is over.

Well, not quite, not in Stanwoodopolis, not with the City Council that can’t in good conscience, so they plead, sanction recreational drugs in their fair city. They have to protect the kids. As if the kids aren’t buying everything from beer to heroin from their friends and the pushers who ply the parking lots and parks. The mayor estimates that hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax revenue are going to be lost to all those surrounding areas that accepted the will of the voter to legalize marijuana. Arlington makes $400,000 a year already.

Take a little stroll down the streets of town with me. Cupcake shop, check, antique store, check many times, pizza delivery shop, check, boutique consignment shop, check, bar and grill,, check twice, Chinese restaurant, yup, co-op art gallery, check. Empty storefronts, plenty of those…. Ghost towns start this way and with the coming flood insurance increases, their best hope is to breach the sewer lagoon and bring in gondolas with singing Norwegians to ply the canals of the sunken city. Some towns get exactly what they deserve. Uff Duh!