The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Some of the radicals down at the South End Marina were discussing the take-over of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge down in eastern Oregon. They had started down by the boatsheds but had ended up in the Pilot Lounge where they could fuel their anger with alcohol. Walter, as usual, was the most vocal. “We ought to go down there and join these fellow patriots,” he cried after a couple of rum and cokes. “Show some solidarity!”

J.D. shook his head. “Don’t count on me, Walt. That’s another Waco in the making. The Feds are waiting now, but when they get bored, they’ll go in and clean up. Gonna be a bloodbath for sure.”

“It’s people like you, J.D., who let the government push us around. All these folks want is their land given back to the people.” A few heads nodded, another round was ordered and J.D. said he had to get home. “My turn to babysit the grandkids,” he said meekly and Walter’s laughter followed him out the door.

I was parked at the end of the bar with Guitar Bob, nursing a beer. Maybe it was the cold I’d been fighting for a few days that made me ornery. “Why don’tcha take over the State Park?” I asked the assembled militiamen. “Get our land back, why don’tcha?” Guitar Bob raised a glass in a salute.

Walter, always up for a challenge, shouted, “That’s the best idea you’ve had since I knew you, Skeeter. You gonna come with us?”

“Walter, I got some bad news for you. We already own the park. And we own that Wildlife Refuge down in Oregon too. If you got the park back, who you gonna have run it? Fix the roads? Clean up the toilets? All that stuff? You??”

“Power to the People!” Guitar Bob shouted menacingly. “Off the pigs! Remember the Alamo!!” Bob had recently fallen off the wagon and to make up for lost time, he’d maybe a had a few too many. “Don’t tread on ME! you %#@**!#”

Well, as you can imagine, things went swiftly downhill from there. Last I heard Bob was 86’d from the Pilot Lounge. Walter couldn’t muster enough manpower to take the men’s washroom, much less the State Park. And I took my head cold home where I fell asleep watching the evening news which probably explained my troubled dreams.

I just read a study that proved ‘grumpy’ miserable people live just as long as the happy cheerful folks. This is good news to us seasonally afflicted South Enders, all us perennial grumpsters holed up in our dark shacks hoping Global Warming is true and it gets here soon. I can say for myself, at least now that I can rub this phony smile off my mug and go back to honest cynicism knowing it won’t cause cancer or a heart attack, it’s a relief. A smile, I don’t care how many times you sing it, isn’t much of an umbrella. Even face down ….

Course half of us down here don’t believe in science so a ‘study’ isn’t going to change most minds. Half don’t buy climate change or evolution or the Round Earth theory. Just ornery, I guess. That, or they got religious beliefs we’re supposed to be tolerant of even if they’re intolerant toward everyone else’s.

I’m sure next year we’ll get a study on whether religion makes a believer happier. You’d sure think it would, not that they’d maybe live longer, but go ask the Taliban how cheerful they are without music or dancing in their lives. Some of our righteous neighbors seem too busy casting stones at the rest of us they don’t squeeze much joy out of their own lives, probably wouldn’t if every day was warm and sunny.

Personally I don’t think happiness springs from too rich a soil, not something that needs or wants much fertilizing. It requires maybe just the opposite occasionally, brings a little balance to the garden. Me, I sprinkle lots of skepticism, amend with some sarcasm, keep things a little on the warm side when I need to. I get plenty of bugs, worms, even critters. Gardening has its ups and downs, but the harvest, even if it’s on the lean side some years, is pretty good. Might not help me live longer, but it seems more natural, more honest.

And McDonald’s — you can go ahead and change the Happy Meal name, no health benefits, to what it truly is: Crappy Meal. You got science on your side now.

I get tons of viral e-mails from my old man, mostly right wing ranting about Muslims taking over Detroit and America, or the usual Obama-is-a-foreigner bent on destroying America, all the vitriolic propaganda you might think would fade out a little after 7 years of the Obama presidency. It’s been non-stop since 2012 and believe me, that seems like a lifetime.

Don’t ask me why, but this past year I decided to tune into Hot Talk Radio occasionally to listen in on what’s being said outside my usual frame of reference. My usual is three newspaper subscriptions, the New York Times online and plenty of NPR and PBS, what Rush calls ‘lame-stream drive-by media’ when he’s charitable, liars when he’s not. Hot Talk jocks aren’t much for dialogue or debate. They’re angry, they’re fed up, they’re not much interested in the clash of ideas so much as they want a clash. Democrats, all Democrats, are pretty much intent on destroying this once great country. They’re scaredy cats afraid to invade Syria, they lost Iraq, they want to open the floodgates to terrorists, they want to take away our guns, they want to see the Enemy win.

And there are plenty of Enemies. If you listen to this very long, you can become angry too. And more than a little cynical about the state of our union. You will distrust all government. Not just the Democrats, mind you, but those RINOS, those Republican in Name Only frauds who have capitulated too to the Enemy, the Democrats. You will be alarmed about the country going to the secularists, the gays, the politically correct, the Hollywood crowd, the anti-Bible, anti-Christian, anti-God folks who don’t understand what it means on the dollar bill In God We Trust. Your entire American Way of Life is under attack.

So when Donald Trump stepped onto the national soapbox, the lamestreamers thought he would fade in the polls about the time it took to say Birther Whackjob. Me, I bet my brother back a few months ago he would not only not fade, he would win the nomination. Jeb Bush, my brother said, and I said Jeb Bush, money or not, is the Enemy. Jeb Bush is dead raw meat for Trump and the Angry People. The Republican Party itself may be too.

A month ago my brother and I doubled that bet and Trump doubled his lead. He thinks, like most pundits, the Donald is too crazy to win. I think that is exactly why he will win. Maybe not the whole enchilada, but the GOP nomination. Maybe you’ll understand why I’m not going to celebrate when I collect my winnings… and why I’ve made my New Year’s Resolution to turn off right wing radio and stop reading my old man’s e-mails.

We always have a few friends in for Thanksgiving every year, mostly folks who don’t have family nearby. I guess we don’t either — this is our family. A few years back we had Dr. J____, a neighbor lady who preferred the Dr. added to her name, a PhD in business, giving her the right to ask, I suppose.

We’d pretty much sated ourselves on the abundance of the South End, gluttons for tryptophan overdoses, and maybe that was the reason Doc J decided as we cleared the debris before a second round of desserts to clear her throat and suggest, this Day of Thanks, that we go around the table, each one of us bloated feasters, and declare How We’d Like to Die.

“I’ll go first,” the good doctor volunteered. “I’ve given this some serious thought.”

Holy cranberry sauce, I thought as we all sat stunned. Before I could manage to sit bolt upright and offer objection, the professor was launched into her dream demise, a drowning at sea with her little dog Toto on her around-the-world cruise in her 40 foot sailboat. I could feel my turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes colliding with the yams and creamed beans and peas baked in onions. They were waging a war south of the duodenal canal and nobody was inclined colonward.

Finished with her preferred death, she turned to us future corpses and asked who was next? She looked at the person on her left but before that turkey-eater could launch into a thanatopsis, I raised a leg bone and demanded a halt to this. “It’s Thanksgiving,” I cried, “not a funeral. How about we go around and say what we’re thankful for? Jeez!”

Some folks are looking forward to Armageddon. They’ll tell you they’re the ones who’ll be saved, carried up to the Promised Land when the Rapture comes. Me, I’m gonna be glad to be left behind. And I was glad when the doctor finished dessert and left for home. Turns out she almost died near the Fijis on her ill-fated cruise. I guess you should be careful what you wish for. Or at least what others wish for you ….