The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

You maybe have had this happen. Your spouse goes tweety on you and nothing will settle him or her down. Not the usual pharmacology, not the soothing words, not a few days of rest. Nothing. And the time finally comes when you throw up your hands, throw in the towel and toss her or him into the truck and drop them off at the emergency room of the nearest pain motel and let the psychiatrists have a Go. Sedate em, give em a chance to sleep soundly, see what things look like when the meds wear off.

My neighbor Phil had just taken Sheila to the Skagit Hospital. Put her — in his words — in the rubber room. He had his two year old son with him and he was in a sad frame of mind. He’d come down for a little comfort, maybe some advice, and plenty of beer, three of which I had in abundance. We started with the beer, then got around to the comfort and finally reached the advice as we were walking down the road, his boy in hand and his dog Kona running to and fro. These were the days we had virtually NO traffic, but still … you needed to pay attention.

I had just finished saying, “Keep a good attitude, man, it can’t get any worse,” or some banal horseshit platitude to cheer him up when we hear the car zooming around the curve behind us and Phil, without thinking, calls to Kona roaming the woods across the highway. I say No! but it’s too late. Kona comes running and the car comes hurtling and we watch, as if in slow motion, the car hit Kona at 50 mph and send him flying down the road and hit the pavement dead as a doornail. Phil’s boy claps his hands and laughs because he’s never seen Kona do any flying before. The woman driving the car is crying and I’m telling her it’s not her fault, just drive away. We’re sorry, just drive on, we’ll take care of this.

I buried Kona while Phil dropped his son with his wife’s parents for the night. Then we headed into town for some serious drinking. Forgetting, as always, it not only can get worse, there’s a likelihood it will….

So I’m down at the hardware store with my one item in hand. The guy in front of me at the register is transacting some sort of complicated purchase for his 3 plastic bucket lids that involves multiple credit cards, a void, new start, phone numbers (multiple), background checks, everything but a full body scan. After 10 minutes the cashier calls for backup. The new cashier takes the guy behind me … who wants keys made which will, believe me, take awhile. Doesn’t bother him to jump to the front of the line.

But unbelievably, the new cashier makes those keys before the 3 bucket lid transaction is completed. And then he takes the woman behind me again, although this time he says, “I’ll take the next one in line.” The woman who hustles over PDQ eyeballs me sheepishly but hey, it’s a jungle here on the South End and she looks like she’d eat her young if need be to get to that register first.

There are a dozen annoyances in any given day, is what I think, and I suppose I could blow them up to something BIG and ruin the mood of an Indian summer afternoon. My old pard, Guitar Bob and I, being of similar dispositions, meaning we’re a tooth or two on the gnarly side, often talk about why we let this stuff bug us. It’s not like we’re Zen Buddhist priests, but we are a couple of old codgers on the sunny side of life’s sidewalk in a country that’s rich, living on the paradisical South End. What, we ask ourselves, have we got to bitch about? And wouldn’t a sense of humor in these situations be the more appropriate response?

Well, Bob and I agree, life would be better if, instead of getting pissed off at these minor annoyances, we leaned back and found the humor in these situations. Trouble is, we apparently aren’t ready for the Monastery of Mirth.

Today two gentlemen in suits and ties jaywalked in front of me at the airport parking garage, popped open the door of their car next to the only open stall I’d found down 2 or 3 aisles, then opened their trunk, fiddled around, looked at me stopped exactly where their jaywalking had left me, glanced at the open door preventing me parking, then went back to their trunk reorganization. I waited a couple of minutes, then decided I would run out of gas waiting for these yahoos and drove on down the line … but NOT before I flipped them off. The mizzus, always a proponent of pacifism, asked if I was angry. What, me, angry?

“No, “ I said, pulling into the next available stall, “can’t I just give the finger to a couple of arrogant, discourteous suits?”

Needless to say, my funny bone may be too arthritic for remedial help.

The South End Suds and Duds, our local laundromat and gossip center, advertises as OPEN 24/7, but for us Maytagless residents, we know it’s open maybe only 5 or 6 days, the other two they’re closed for repairs and plumbing catastrophes now that Wanda , the current owner, lost her husband/repair guy to Cindy, one of the regulars, at least until she ran off for a new life in Phoenix. Wanda took Fred’s betrayal hard, especially considering Cindy was young enough to be their daughter. If she was a bitter chainsmoking woman before, she doubled down after. And consequently lost interest in the Suds and Duds.

I happened to be washing a week’s worth of dirty clothes and sheets when our washer refused to drain. Wanda was interviewing Tommy Wilson for the position of Head Roto-Rooter. Tommy barely knows which end is the working end of a toilet plunger, but Wanda obviously was short on applicants. “I got a guy yesterday,” she said through a haze of Pall Mall smoke, “probably illegal. I said I’d need to see a green card. He could barely speak English. Said he had a family to feed. I told him I was hiring him, not his whole damn family.”

Tommy swore. “Takin our jobs. They’ll own America before long.” Tommy’s jobs disappeared a long time ago. If Wanda hired him, it would break a streak of decades. “We need to deport these people,” he growled darkly. “Just leeches on the rest of us.” Wanda shot him a long exclamation point of smoke. For once I kept my mouth shut. It’s hellish enough doing the laundry here without debating the owners and clientele. I vowed to get my washer fixed ASAP or die trying.

Tommy lasted about half a week, near as I could tell, probably until the first breakdown. Wanda hired an hombre named Carlos to replace him. They say he can fix about anything. Except maybe Wanda’s broke heart and bitter life. I bought a used washer at the 2nd hand appliance place up north. A very polite Hispanic kid helped me load it into my truck. I noticed he spoke perfect English.

I was hitting the local pawnshops today, everyone within about 50 miles, looking for two of my guitars our favorite drug addict down the road stole from me. The island cops know who stole them, I know who stole them …. And apparently that’s enough for them. But it doesn’t really work for me.

The pawnshop I went to first knew my thief — even went to school with him. And yeah, he comes in fairly frequently, no doubt with half my neighbors’ goods. Looking around the shop, I realized that what we have here is a legal ‘fencing’ operation. You don’t have a serial number on that stereo or television set or rifle or jewelry, well, it’s just not possible to say definitively that item is yours, sir. You see our predicament.

Okay, I see someone’s predicament. I got cops who have caught my thief with stolen goods more than once, but don’t haul him in. I got pawnshops taking in those goods and reselling them. I got a guy in my neighborhood who needs money for heroin. I guess the predicament is all mine.

Two Toke Tom tells me I’m too materialistic, too hung up on my possessions. “You got nothing, you got nothing to lose,” he intones, smiling his Cheshire Cat grin.

“Won’t be long at this rate,” I reply, knowing I don’t have a whole lot worth stealing. Old TV, 50 year old stereo, lawnmower on its last legs, camera maybe, computer. Maybe I should just have a garage sale and save my burglar any further effort.

We’ve had more than a couple of addicts on the South End lately. 90% of the crime. I say give them their fix. Make it legal, dispense it at the clinic, provide clean syringes. The war on drugs? We lost it long ago. I’m running the white flag up the chimney. The cops already have. And yeah, sure, I’ll feel sorry for the pawn boys. But … you can see my predicament, can’t you?

Cold Turkey

Sad to say, I gotta take a leave of absence from the blogosphere. Gonna head down to Hood River on the Columbia for some R&R.  The R&R is for you readers.  Give you a break.  If you need a fix, go back in the archives and pull up an old rant from a year or two ago.  If that doesn’t work, turn on Fox News or try methadone.  Me, I’m hoping to unplug from the 24/7 Trump tweets and the Benghazi revelations.  Should do us all a world of good….