The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Some days the past comes calling. I was watering our garden this afternoon when an old friend hauled into the drive with a pack and a 5 gallon bottle of water he had lashed to a roller suitcase. Got off the bus that doesn’t run the last lousy three miles of island and walked here on his way to his brother’s cabin a mile south pulling that water along dirt road and blacktop. The cabin doesn’t have a well.

Tom’s been through some changes. Haven’t we all? I knew him back when … some 30 or 35 years ago. He was a hard drinking 20 something, distributed beer around the area, loved to tell stories of bars between Montana and California, the old saloons mostly gone now or restored to yuppie shrines. I nailed the ridgepole on the day we hoisted the 40 foot log up into position on his brother’s log cabin. Felt like I’d hammered the Golden Spike on the first transcontinental railroad. Quite an honor, definitely a privilege.

Tom moved down to Arizona, did the maintenance for the spring baseball, mowed, watered, all the stuff Mesa needs to keep a desert ballpark grassy and green. He got a bad back, developed an over-enthusiastic love of alcohol, had some physical breakdowns, went into rehab, took an early retirement on disability, discovered — or acknowledged — he was gay. He looked good today. Old, maybe, older even than me, but healthy old. Walking his gear two miles from the bus dropoff, 30 years from when I knew him.

I guess in a way we’re all old codgers now, pulling our water and our stories and our packs down the highway that runs back toward home … or some reasonable facsimile. He’ll stay a night or two, reminisce, commune with the stars and the skeeters, maybe have a campfire there under the big firs up where the dirt road to the cabin ends and something else, not memory, begins. I’ll be doing something similar, I guess, thinking of all the old campfires and the nights long ago up at that cabin. What I think is we’re all hauling water, we’re all dragging stories….

My neighbors across the road, every year now, put iris bulbs out on the highway with a sign that says FREE. Cars stop, trunks fly open and another load of plants migrates south. Over a hundred varieties of irises they brought from Oklahoma are taking over the South End, iris capital of the world.
This is a new twist on an old country tradition — passing plants to the neighbors. Look around and you’ll see our quince bush is about the age of the Nesje’s up the road. There are 3 sequoias in the neighborhood, all about the same height and age. Our mock orange is showing up from here to Tyee.
A cutting here, a few bulbs there, a piece of honeysuckle vine, a funny vegetable like our Jerusalem artichoke, some plants that make a jail break on their own like our comfrey, trees like my neighbor’s chestnuts that pop up everywhere or our filberts the blue jays plant for us and everybody else —- the plants get spread around.
The mizzus is a horticulturist. Me, I’m more of a hortichuckle-ist. I used to find plants back in the hollows, at old homesteads, by hidden ponds and muddy creek sides. I got one, a 7 foot tall monster wild orchid, a Jumpin Jimmy that spreads by spitting its seeds out of a pod. We’d find em on the roof, up in the gutter where the mulch is about a foot deep, nearly everywhere but in the house…at least for now.
You got to be careful, I guess. I suppose it won’t be long before the moralists take a swing at this. Plant swapping. It isn’t natural. It isn’t right. Ought to nip it in the bud. Stick to the native plants. Live on stinging nettle soup and quit importing foreign vegetables. Send those potatoes back to Ireland and those artichokes back to Israel where they belong….
Personally – and don’t tell Ma I said this – I’m all FOR plant swapping. Seems neighborly somehow. And saves me from those collecting trips back in the jungle and swamps now that the Jumpin Jimmies have taken over everything in sight.

Opportunity occasionally comes knocking for most of us.  Trouble with us South Enders, we don’t often answer the door.  You take Wild Bill, the South End String Band’s former bass player.  He and a couple of  buddies started up their own advertising agency down in San Francisco back in the heydays of the Grateful Dead, rented themselves an office and hired a girl Friday.  The boys came back from lunch one fine California day and their secretary Shelly said there’d been a guy in to see them, Steve somebody or other, who was starting his own company and wanted to sit down and talk publicity, promotion, advertising, just what Wild Bill and his cohorts were in business to do.

Hot damn, a client!!  They told Shelly to make an appointment to meet them at Bill’s apartment that night.  There was a ’49ers game on Monday Night Football and they figured they’d mix a little pleasure with business.  Their new client, no doubt, would get a kick out of drinking some beer and rooting for his home team, and maybe at half time they could kick around some advertising strategies before the second half kickoff.  Steve came by and the boys put a beer in his hand, told him to have a seat, kick back and enjoy the game.  Well, quite a few beers later, the game being close and all, they never really got much strategizing in.  Steve sipped at his beer, mostly to be friendly, but obviously he wasn’t much of a drinker and worse, he didn’t seem much interested in who won the football game or maybe he didn’t even understand the damn game.  Odd guy, real quiet, sober as a judge.  Finally the boys pretty much ignored him completely and by the 3rd quarter Steve excused himself, thanked them for the beer and said he probably should get on home, he had work to do.

Haw haw, work to do??  On a Monday Night Football night?  With San Francisco playing?? The boys just shook their heads when he’d gone.  Probably some poor gomer with a sure-to-fail business and they were probably lucky not to waste time on a losing bet.  They popped a few more brewskis and settled in for the 4th quarter.

Next day Shelly asked the bedraggled football fans how the meeting went with Steve.  Okay, they said, odd guy.  Great game, though, the ’49ers pulled it out in the last quarter.  “You want me to call Mr. Jobs back and make another appointment?” Shelly asked.  Naw, the boys said, Steve’s on his own and good luck to him.  Haw haw.

Last time I looked Apple was the biggest company in the world, Steve did okay without the boys and Wild Bill ended up in the South End String Band.  Nobody knows what happened to Shelly.

The Flatheads were holding court at the Diner the day after the FDA approved the women’s new sex drug.  Lined up like an ad for an automobile museum, their Nashes and Oldsmobiles, Packards and Pontiacs gleamed in this summer’s endless sun.  Tork ‘The Wrench’ Anderson was musing over his Santa Fe Omelette how life was going to be nitro-charged from here on out.  “I may have to start jogging again,” he declared to the assembled geriatrics, “just to keep up with the mizzus.”

Randy, who once owned the O-Zi-Ya Body Shoppe before he sold it and retired, put down his second cup of decaf coffee and shook his head sadly.  “After my last heart attack I decided to slow down on the bedroom.  Too much stress on my ticker.”  Freddie howled from the next table.  “I bet Cindy thought her prayers were finally answered.”  Randy closed his eyes and nodded.  “I don’t think the pink pills are for her.”

Brenda breezed through the back room about then with a coffee pot.  “Whaddaya think, Brenda?” Joey asked when she poured him a refill.  “Gonna be a big run on that women’s Viagra?”  Brenda stopped, all eyes on her as if she were the Dr. Phil of the Women’s Health Movement.  “That depends, I guess.”  “On what?” Freddie asked, holding out his empty mug, big grin on his.

“If you’re hoping a little pill is gonna make you old farts look good, I got some bad news for you boys.  You’re expecting a miracle.  It’s like those cars outside there.  They’re waxed up and ready for show, but you know and I know, what’s under the hood isn’t much.”

Ralph said, “Ouch, Brenda, that’s kinda cruel.”

“Sorry,” she laughed, “but you did ask.”  She held the coffee pot up. “More octane, fellas???”

Copulation Merit Badge

Slim Jim was a little wound up at the Pilot House’s happy hour.  Course, it was two hours PAST the happy one and Jim was paying full price for 16 oz.’s of bitterness and I don’t mean IPA’s.  “I’m pulling Little Jimmy out of the Scouts,” he was hollering to Two Toke Tom, Guitar Bob and me at the adjoining table.  “Before you know it, they’ll have Sodomy as a merit badge.  I mean, Jeez, where does this end?  I tell you what, I’ve had it up to here.”

Up to here evidently was his pie hole where he was now pouring down his 4^th pint.  Guitar Bob’s kid Billy was a member of the South End Troop 17 sponsored by the Little Chapel in the Ravine.  The Little Chapel had considered pulling out after the Scouts decided the time had come to accept gays, but the deacons couldn’t reach a decision without tearing the membership apart.

“You gonna let Billy stay in?” Jim asked Bob.  “You aren’t worried he’ll end up some limp wrist with all the perverts we got these days?  What kind of father …?”

Bob held up a hand in a stop sign.  “Settle down, Jim.  It isn’t the end of manhood as we know it.  It’s the same troop.  You know all these kids.  And Phil’s a good scoutmaster.  What the hell are you cranking yourself up for?”

“Holy crap, Bob,” Jim spluttered, half rising from his seat.  “These are our kids’ lives, ya know?  We didn’t send them to Boy Scouts to earn Fairy Badges, we expected them to learn how to use knives and hatchets.  The way we did, remember?”

“Billy just got his computer merit badge, Jim.  I don’t care if he learns how to chop wood in the 21^st century.  We’re not Cro Magnons.  No offense, Skeeter,” he grinned, looking my way.

“Me like fire.  Me cut wood,” I grunted. So did Jim.  “Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the damn Scouts.  They don’t care about teaching Manhood.  They’re all a bunch of pansies, you ask me.”

“We didn’t,” Two Toke said.

“Look who’s talking,” Jim grumbled, “a guy who never had a kid, probably couldn’t if he wanted to.”

Tom, instead of taking offense, just laughed.  “If I’d known I could get sex-ed in Boy Scouts, I’d’ve joined.  But isn’t that what you’re worried about?”

Jim snorted in disgust, swilled down his half full glass and got up to leave.  On his way to the door he turned back to us.  “You three faggots are exactly what’s wrong with this country.”

Two Toke shook his head sadly, but Guitar Bob laughed.  “Love you, man,” he said for all the bar to hear before throwing him a kiss.  Love on the South End comes in many disguises….