The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Dr. Gonzo

We got a lot of folks on the South End making a living the hard way, meaning, they don’t work. In the pioneer days when I first scratched out a meager existence in these played out nettle farms, people survived on piece work here, odd jobs there, some bartering, some horsetrading, the usual indolent country skills. But the new folks, they do some of that, but mostly, due to some serious drug maintenance problems, they got more pressing issues. You want to maintain a heroin addiction, you probably aren’t going to commute to McDonalds and take a job as fry cook. No, it’s easier if you just steal what the neighbors got.

This is more or less what I left the city to escape. No, not jobs or employment. Neighbors stealing from neighbors. What was really sad back then was how the poor folks stole from the poor folks. Easier, I admit, to slip down the alley and come in a nearby backdoor than to drive up to the white folks’ suburbs even though the pickings would have made it more than worth the effort. Course then you have security alarms and motion sensitive cameras and a police force that patrols those tonier neighborhoods. Me, I had Dr. Gonzo.

Dr. Gonzo was a refugee of the Humane Society, part boxer, part hound of Baskerville, a fearless brute of a dog who had been abused by its previous owner who was, judging by her reaction to men, male. If you happened to be a black male, she ratcheted up her snarls about double the decibels. And if you were a fat male, she was nearly unmanageable. Frighteningly so. But if you were a black and fat male, she wanted to hurt you. She probably wanted to kill you. My assumption is her abuser might have fit that exact description and it might explain why she ended up at the pound. Her tormentor probably realized he wasn’t going to cow her and one of them had to go.

She was well known to my neighborhood. It was also well known my house wasn’t usually locked. Not with Dr. Gonzo inside. You wanted to walk in, maybe see if my TV was worth stealing, have at it and good luck. Men knocked on my door and I’d say, kicking a snarling growling Gonzo back behind me, come on in, why dontcha? “Naw man, let’s talk on the porch here,” they invariably replied. And invariably they would want to know if I’d consider selling Gonzo to them. “Maybe you’d like to get to know her better,” I’d suggest, opening the door a crack to let them see Gonzo trying to get her snapping jaws through and I’d say it doesn’t look as if she likes you, man. “How about you breed her, sell me the pups?” And I’d shake my head sadly, naw man, she’s been spayed.

I didn’t have much trouble in that high crime neighborhood even with the 10 units next door that were nothing but a breeding ground for drugs, gunrunning, sex trafficking and fencing. Still, it seemed, I don’t know, a corrosive atmosphere, a breeding ground for cynicism, a hard place to practice peaceful meditation. For both Gonzo and me. So we packed it in, bought a 1910 shack up here on the South End and made a new start, both of us. She died some years back, broke my heart. But at least she never lived so long she had to see the ghetto boys living next door once again.

You maybe haven’t heard the news yet — Colton Harris Moore, our very own Barefoot Bandit — started a jailhouse fundraiser for saving his mom who has terminal cancer. He’s concerned he won’t be released from prison in time to see her one last reunion, his dear old mom, the woman who made him what he is today. She always said he was smarter than Einstein and now he’s hit on an ingenious solution to what might seem to us ordinary folks, an unsolvable problem.

He wants to freeze her. Something a lot of us wanted to do a long time ago. But with the fervent hope that the magic of cryogenics would allow her to remain in suspended animation until we figure out how to bring her back to her vivacious self down the road. I hate to sound cynical or mean spirited toward a woman dying of lung cancer, and at the risk of appearing un-Christian, I just think maybe we should let Pam go quietly to her reward in the afterlife. Even if flash frozen humans became a possibility.

I can think of a few more eligible candidates for reanimation after death than Colt’s mom. And trust me, I’m not one of them. Some of us South Enders, more skeptical even than myself, think the Barefoot Burglar is really after the money he might raise. Well, I tried, Mom, but it wasn’t quite enough for 50 years of freezer burn storage, and so I used the donations to go to Harvard to get my degree in aviation technology. Personally, I kind of like that scenario. Not enough to donate money to the fund, but maybe the internet followers of Colton’s daring exploits would throw some coinage his way. Why not? The Kid was the first hero of the internet, a 21st century Jesse James.

If you, like me, aren’t anxious to help out with some spare change, I totally understand. But maybe here on the South End, the Kid’s stomping ground and lair, someone will step forward with at least a Frigidaire they aren’t using. Mine is sort of full.

I got a lot of cronies down here on the digitally divided South End who do not own a computer much less know how to use one. Granted, some of us misanthropes think we can reach the grave before it matters that we’re hopelessly out of touch with the 21st century. Who needs e-mail when we can call up a friend on his rotary telephone, eh? Now that we got private phones and not the party line we once had, why not enjoy it a few more years?

The mizzus got a computer back when Compaq was still a fresh face, not an old grave. She loves all things technical and so she was pretty much in the forefront of home computer technology. If not for her, no way would I own a computer. I still push lawnmowers, not ride em. I still chop wood, not turn a thermostat. I still got a 3 speed transmission, not an automatic. I waited a long time before hitchhiking on the digital highway, figuring for years I’d just wait til Apple came out with a machine that would talk me through all the introductory stuff.

But my pals without marital tutors, they’re still waiting. Three year olds are more savvy than half of us down here in the 20th Century. Course, that was sort of true back in the 20th Century too so maybe nothing much has changed. But the speed of the advances over the past couple decades is a little frightening, especially for anyone thinking they might wait a little longer then catch up once they buy a machine and figure how to turn it on. Or fix it when it glitches. Or set up programs, e-mail accounts, twitter feeds, all that stuff they’ve heard about but never wanted to learn.

I know I wouldn’t want to be starting out now that far behind. Maybe okay if you have a 3 year old to show you the ropes, but if not, fat chance, good luck. I assume most of these poor geezers will have to wait to buy their first Mac or PC when Netflix announces it will stop sending DVD movies and goes exclusively to streaming. When that day comes, trust me, I’ll be buying stocks in Apple and Dell. The last holdouts will have no choice.

Awhile back some nut shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic. A few weeks ago 3 nuts shot, so far, 14 people to death down in San Berdoo. Congress is up in arms – no pun intended – about Syrian terrorists slipping in with refugees. This same fearful crop of legislators refuses to put regulations on guns. They voted down No Fly – No Buy, the bill to keep anyone who’s on the TSA No Fly list from buying a gun, figuring, oddly enough, they might be a potential terrorist.

The boys who voted it down said there might be mistakes on the list and they didn’t want to deprive an honest citizen his God-given right to bear arms. Oh, right. How about the folks denied the right to vote when their names are confused on voter registries??

Down here on the Don’t Tread on Me South End, we got our fair share of firearms. I got a shotgun myself, although I confess, I’m not sure if it still shoots. We’ve all grown up with too many westerns, too much Dirty Harry and way too much video violence. Somehow we think guns are the solution. But let me tell you a story. My pal Freddie was thinking he might buy himself a ‘piece’, put it maybe in his nightstand loaded. With the safety ON, of course. What for? I asked and he said, you know, burglars. You got crime out your way? I asked and he said you never know, best to be prepared.

A month ago his daughter from a college 300 miles away came home unannounced. Let herself in the front door at 3 A.M. and clattered around a minute or two then walked into her parents’ bedroom. She was distraught, depressed, upset. Drove all night, just wanting to crawl in with Mom and Dad like when she was a kid with nightmares, crawl in for comfort, for love, for reassurances the world wasn’t as scary as it seemed right then.

Fred told me he thanked God he didn’t have a revolver in that nightstand because when he heard the front door open, then footsteps coming down the hall headed right to his bedroom, he seriously wanted that gun.

“I don’t know, Skeeter,” he told me, shaking his head. “I could’ve shot my own kid. 3 in the damn morning. What was she thinking?” I suspect more family members are killed than burglars with guns. Freddie, you better believe, won’t be thinking about arming himself now. Last I heard he was thinking about a large guard dog. Even though he’s never had a dog before.