The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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.

I have made a terrible mistake! I know what you’re thinking, and yeah, it seemed unlikely to me too. But it’s true, I’ve screwed up Big Time, one of those mistakes you may have to regret the rest of your sorry miserable life.

We have a woods in back, about 5 acres, which when we bought the place was completely covered in old growth nettles that grew to seven, even eight feet tall. Impenetrable jungle of the stinging beasts we had to beat a trail into just to get into our own woods. But one year I noticed that these little delicate bleeding heart plants had established their puny selves in and among those giant stinging nettles and seemed to supplant their network of roots. So for years I have been planting the bleeding hearts along the trail along with some myrtle starts, periwinkle maybe you call them, and over time they not only lined our trail, they spread into the woods. It was wonderful.

A few years back I decided, despite reading about the impossibility of eliminating my nettles, to attempt to do just that, kill the buggers. The first year I sickled them down, about three acres of them, and I noticed that the following year the new nettles were greatly diminished. Heartened, I whacked all five acres and I’ve been doing it now for three years. You walk back in our woods, you don’t see many nettles anymore and now trees we’ve planted have a chance to grow whereas before they died a sunless death under the nettle canopy. It’s almost a park back there.

But … awhile back I planted a little variegated vine, a lamium, commonly called the Yellow Archangel. It has a relative, you might be interested, called Dead Nettle. Dead Nettle, now, you know I’m going to bite on that. So I stuck a sprig here, a clump there and figured it would be a colorful addition to the bleeding hearts and the periwinkle. It was. For the first couple of years. But then it started to run. Then it galloped. And this year it went into warp drive, covering up the bleeding hearts, the myrtle, the ferns, dead logs, stray children, anything in its ravenous way. It is the kudzu of the north, invasive as Trump’s Syrian terrorists, and rapidly on its way to covering our entire woods. It is a nightmare. It is a scourge. It is a total mistake and now I have to try to correct it. To save not just my woods and the South End, but quite possibly the world.

I have begun whacking them. I have mowed them. I am now weedeating the jungle monsters. I have about half an acre to an acre of these creeping beasts and my theory is that if they never see daylight, like the nettles, their roots, I don’t care how many hundreds of miles of pulpy tendrils, they’ll die. You should wish me luck because your fate depends on me. If I fail, I am so so sorry. I plead benign ignorance even though I know that won’t help in the end. And yeah, I know, ignorance isn’t bliss.

Hoo boy, you want to start a war, start bringing religion into the conversation, next thing you know you got folks beating each other over the skullcap with a Koran or a Bible. I grew up thinking America was founded on a concept called separation of church and state. What a gullible little goober I was. Give unto Caeser what is Caeser’s. When in Rome, etc. But that was then and this is today. Rome is a seat of religion, kind of got some serious ideas about what’s right, what’s not. But you don’t have to travel to Italy to get an Edict. Hell, take a vacation in Mississippi, unless of course you’re gay or a friend of a gay or a relative of a gay. Their collective religionists, mostly Christian, they got the Word of God that tells them gays are an aberrance, an abhorrence in the eyes of the Lord. Says so in their Bible.

You say you don’t read their Bible? Well, sir, you maybe didn’t know this country was a Christian country. Got IN GOD WE TRUST right there on your money, what more proof do you need?? You ask whose God you talking about? The God of Mississippi, my friend. The God of the Founders. The God maybe you don’t pray to or even believe in? The God who doesn’t want trans-genders in their bathrooms, ye of little faith. The God who doesn’t like Planned Parenthood. The God of the Old Testament, that’s who!!!

So you believe in tolerance? You believe in secular government? You give homosexuals equal rights to the God fearing, you better believe you got a war on your hands. If my religion thinks the non-whites are inferior, I got no choice but to live by my creed, the one the Creator passed down, the one translated from the Scrolls. My religion thinks women ought to serve us men, well, don’t expect me to respect any laws you pass that make it discrimination to treat them according to the Text. You want to wage war on my religion, you better get ready, pal.

You ask what if some other religion has different views, what about respecting their beliefs? Maybe you weren’t listening close. Their views are bogus. Our views are the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, the only truth. Can we make it any clearer???

So go ahead and make your laws, your secular commandments. Call us bigots. Call us homophobes. Call us the American Taliban. You want a culture war, you already got one….

Back when the neighbors had dairy cows, we used to get our milk direct from the udder. Unpasteurized, no growth hormone, no antibiotic whole milk. Course, back then we were told by the FDA and the food scientists that this would increase our chances of heart disease and diabetes. But …! If we took a baby aspirin a day, we could lessen those chances. Sort of like driving over the speed limit but wearing a seat belt. You get in a wreck, you might survive.

You’re as old as me, you maybe remember 5th grade food pyramids. Meat and poultry up at the top, high in protein, fruits and vegetables down toward the middle, candy and pop taboo. In the 60’s we learned sugar was poison and alcohol too and so was red meat and ditto on salt. We started drinking skim milk, substituted saccharin for sugar and oleomargarine for butter. Skip the eggs, pass the fiber.

This week I read a study showing that people like myself who drink high fat milk have decreased heart disease and less risk for diabetes. Fats, it turns out, aren’t all bad. Aspirin a day, so they tell me now, isn’t maybe so good for you if you aren’t already at risk for a heart attack. Butter is better for you than margarine. And too little salt, well, you need salt. You want to live longer, drink a glass or two of wine every day. And even if you don’t live longer, you’ll be happier.

I got friends who won’t eat fruit unless it’s in a pop tart. Some others wouldn’t eat broccoli or cauliflower unless you waterboarded them first. My brother thinks 1% milk is cream and it would kill him in a week. I know folks who won’t go within a country mile of an egg, might as well be lobbing grenades to the heart. Food, I think more and more, is a faith based religion. Easier just to eat Cheetos and Snickers bars with a couple of vitamin supplements, all the nutrition you need right there in a pill.

Me, I always figured the fresher food was, the better. The more natural, the better. I like my food grown on a tree or coming up out of the ground. I like meat that grazed in a grassy pasture and I love fish that swam wild in a river and I’m crazy about seafood that wasn’t farmed. Hell, I like all kinds of food, at least the kind that isn’t dried out, chopped up, reprocessed and flavor enhanced with enough preservatives to last past a nuclear war. Is it good for me? I think maybe so. The doctors and the health specialists, the scientists and the FDA, well, some years yes, some years no. Hard to say for sure anymore. So I’ll just stick with the tried and true, food made by nature, not by labs. Call me old fashioned. Call me outdated. Call me past my expiration date. But … call me for dinner.