The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

If you’ve ever attended one of the free lectures at the Elger Bay Institute of Aesthetic Enlargement, you know that continuing education flourishes on the erudite South End. For those of you who have cable TV, you probably feel like you don’t need to take advantage of the Institute’s seminars, tutorials and lectures offered to the public, not when you can get every episode of every series made since Milton Berle brought enlightenment to America through the magic of television. But, of course, you’d be wrong and that’s why, no doubt, you read old Skeeter, make sure you aren’t missing anything of real and lasting importance.

Prof. Dimbulbsky spoke the other night to a packed audience in Macrame Hall. His topic was politics and specifically ‘Democracy Post Citizens United’. The good professor walked us through the Supreme Court case that opened up campaign financing to corporations and explained how freedom of speech for Big Business was as important as free speech for us South Enders. “Maybe more so,” Prof. Dimbulbsky said. “They represent all their employees, not just a Board of Directors. Why shouldn’t their votes be tied to profit?” he asked. “The more successful a company, the more votes they should be given.”

“In fact,” he stated, “I’ll go you one further. Why not peg the ballot to profit, not just for the corporation, but to the individual? We value success, do we not? Well then, doesn’t it make logical sense to give those at the top with proven track records more votes than the poor fellow scraping by at the bottom?”

Well, pandemonium nearly broke out in the Hall. Most of us in attendance could see we weren’t going to receive extra votes on the Dimbulbsky Democracy Chart. In fact, if we were following him correctly, he might recommend eliminating us from the voting roles altogether. Admittedly — and Jerry from the Marina did just that — half of us don’t bother voting anyway. And that’s in a presidential election. Off year, I suspect most of us don’t even know there is an election, although ballots come in the mail that maybe look like another credit card application.

Well, food for thought, I guess, the rich getting extra votes. Like the Professor said, they already buy the election with contributions, lobbyists and inside leverage, wouldn’t it just be better, more honest, more transparent, to just get it out in the open? Billy Farthmore, a bag boy at the Plaza making minimum wage, asked why the rich wouldn’t look out for their own interests if they had all the votes? Prof. Dimbulbsky shook his head sadly. “My dear boy, they do now. But who better to make policy than the Winners?” We all chuckled appreciatively. I don’t know if the Professor changed any minds, but worst case, we wouldn’t have to follow Presidential politics for years prior to every election. Out of our hands, out of our minds…. Better, I guess, than class warfare.

I know a lot of folks who are upset as hell about our porous borders. We got Mexicans coming up through Texas, Central Americans sneaking in through Arizona, Cubans boating into Florida, Microsoft retirees rolling into the South End. It’s apparently no more possible to secure the bridge onto the island than it is to guard the southern borders. This last week the Governor of Wisconsin, running for President but fading fast, proposed a fence on the Canadian border. I guess those disenchanted hockey players up north might be contemplating a mass exodus. Over in Europe the refugees from the Middle East are flooding the continent.

Me, I’m not too worried about Canadians. I’m worried about the immigrants we’re building in Amazon, at GM, in factories across America. Robots! That’s what worries me. Job-takers. Amazon wants to use drones to make deliveries door to door. Forget building a wall — they’ll just fly over. Gated community? Not unless they put up a canopy over the entire suburb.

Computers with bodies. Robots with attitude. Artificial intelligence smarter than me and my neighbors. Just what we need…. We’ll look back with nostalgia at the Hispanic crews who used to manicure the fescued yards of the wild South End, folks who you could talk to, folks who ate lunch at the Diner, real folks, flesh and blood folks. With families. And dreams.

The only dream a robot’s gonna have is to take your place. They already hypnotized most of us now. We live in their world, the virtual, digitized one we still think is in our control. Oh yeah, the immigrants are coming all right. We’re bringing em in like the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Only they take over while we’re wide awake.

It’s Harvest Time on the South End and no, I’m not talking about marijuana. The Bud Hut and legalized cannabis pretty much ended that era. I’m talking kraut. Sauerkraut. I know most folks wouldn’t put a forkful of the stuff near their dog, much less their mouth, but I spent some time in Wisconsin where kraut was considered, if not a delicacy, a staple. So I guess it was only natural that I became an artisanal kraut maker.

We got a couple of huge old stoneware crocks, one 8 gallon and one 12 gallon, that we’ve used, oh, the last 20 odd years. We have an antique maple cabbage shredder that sits over the crock with three blades about 6 inches long that a head of cabbage riding on a little box carriage passes over while each blade shreds nice long ribbons into. When we have a few inches’ worth we add a handful of non-iodized salt and a big handful of garlic, then shred some more. Once we got the crock full we haul it down to the shack where the fragrance won’t disturb those with delicate olfactory buds. They think it stinks to high heaven. Which it does about one day later.

The cabbage, see, is fermenting. Bacteria starts breaking it down and the water that’s released gets frothy and aromatic. I got a weighted stoneware lid that keeps the cabbage under the foam and in the liquid. When you think you like the stage of fermentation — or when you can’t take the smell any longer — you haul the crock back up into the kitchen and you bottle it in Mason jars. That’s what we’re doing tonight. Some jars we’ll boil to stop the fermentation and some we’ll just put in sterilized jars, let them keep ‘working’.

The old timers would keep their crocks in the cellar over winter, scrape off the mold and enjoy all those probiotics long before the yuppies ever heard of yogurts and live fermenting foods. Me, I’m not a big fan of scraping molds off my foods. Probiotics are one thing, fungus is another….

Next week’s food blog we’ll explore the mysteries of homebrewing. Probiotics with a Kick!

CEO’s ‘wages’ are going up faster than skyscrapers in Seattle and Gomorrah, the paper said yesterday. This is good news indeed if you believe in trickle down economics, not so good if you have to scrape for rent and groceries. Like my old Uncle Bernie used to say, ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer’. Course, now that he’s one of the richer, he figures we all can get there too. The poor? Well, all boats rise in an incoming tide of wealth, which might’ve been truer when wealth was more evenly distributed.

Little Jimmy, an auto body worker at O-Zi-Ya Body and Paint, makes a little more than minimum wage but not much more. He’s got a wife, Lisa, who works part time at Jolene’s Gift and Boutique and she does make minimum wage, no more. They have three kids and a second mortgage on their double-wide over on the east side of the island. One of the kids, Julie, has a congenital heart condition which requires surgeries and medications. They’re in debt up to their collective eyeballs. You might think they’d be all for Obamacare, cut into those expenses. But you’d be wrong.

Jimmy got into it with Two Toke Tom the other night at the Pilot Lounge. Two Toke was celebrating the Supreme Court’s latest decision that turned back the move to kill the Affordable Health Care Act. Little Jimmy was positively livid. “Socialized health care!” he fairly screamed.

“What the hell, Jimbo?” T.T asked. “You don’t have ANY health care.”

Jimmy, red in the face and pounding his fist on the table, spilling beers, cried, “I pay my own way, Tom. I’m not a #@*&)*!^ freeloader.”

“Okay, okay, Jim. Settle down. They aren’t handing out free beer,” Tom said, “and I’ve lost about a buck’s worth on the table here.”

Jimmy went for a bar rag, shaking his head. Two Toke drew circles in the foamy puddles, tasted a finger, then smiled sadly in my direction. “I know,” he whispered, “let it go.”

I knew he was thinking about Julie. Me too. What neither of us knew was whether Jimmy was.

The Upcreekomish, once a proud nation feasting on the yearly salmon runs, wanted for nothing.  Their hunting and fishing prowess was known up and down the coast, their art was envied, their canoes admired.  They traded with the coastal clans, but for the most part they kept to themselves upriver.  When the whites settled nearby, trapping and mining, the Upcreekomish shook their collective heads but maintained peaceful relations.  Who knew they would lose everything to these men with shovels and saws?

The Otter Creek Trading Post — at least according to Three Finger Bill, a hapless logger who made it back out of the woods before he started whittling away toes and feet with his 40 inch chainsaw — claims the Post was the old Grabbinrun Mining Company’s general store back in the late 1880’s.  The Upcreekomish traded furs for canned food, salmon for bad hooch and various totem carvings for tobacco.  Was it a bad trade?  Three Finger will tell you he’s got a cedar chest ornamented with a beaver totem the professors down at the University offered 6 figures for, about the number of his fingers still usable.  Bill tells me he doesn’t need the money and besides, he uses the box to keep his bad hooch, cigarettes and canned Spaghetti-O’s in.  Sometimes life comes full circle.

Bill’s uncle Walter ran the store after the mines closed and the company script ended.  A few salty dogs kept panning, built small cabins and settled in for an early Depression.  The store survived, but like the miners and the Upcreekomish, just barely and not much to recommend the life.  Tourism brought a few fishermen and backpackers through, and the store, ever adaptable, supplied them with high priced rods, reels, fishing supplies and the ever popular corn dog and microwaveable burrito.  Mostly the store makes its profit on tobacco and alcohol, plus Lotto.

I guess you could say the locals are still getting the short end of the stick, but if you crave Spaghetti-O’s, maybe you don’t mind.